


Slow Striptease Toward a Tender Heart

by writingmonsters



Category: Burnt (2015)
Genre: Adam Jones Doesn't Know How Feelings Work Because He's a Toddler, Alternate Ending, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I'm Fixing This Movie Ending Myself Damn It, M/M, Tony Balerdi is the Personification of Gay Panic and Disaster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-06-01 14:35:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15145259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingmonsters/pseuds/writingmonsters
Summary: so we strained after less and less as the barbsperhaps drew a little bloodand we cut our wayinto the core to rid us of the fiberthat would stifle every ut-terance between us.In our quest for that morsel,how we risked silence,risked evenlove.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I owe and endless debt of gratitude to misanthropiclycanthrope for introducing me to this film and to the wonders of darling, squishy-faced Tony Balerdi and for encouraging me to write Tony and Adam a better ending.
> 
> Also of important note -- I don't know a darn thing about cooking. I max out at mac n' cheese out of the box. So... forgive any and all errors.

_ For all the bother, it’s the peeling away _ _   
_ _ we savored, the slow striptease _ _   
_ _ toward a tender heart— _ _   
_ _   
_ _ how each petal dipped in the buttery sauce _ _   
_ _ was raked across our lower _ _   
_ _ teeth, its residue _ _   
_ _   
_ _ less redolent of desire than sweet restraint, _ _   
_ _ a mere foretaste of passion, _ _   
_ _ but the scaly plates _ _   
_ _   
_ _ piled up like potsherds in a kitchen midden, _ _   
_ _ a history in what’s now _ _   
_ _ useless, discarded— _ _   
_ _   
_ _ so we strained after less and less as the barbs _ _   
_ _ perhaps drew a little blood _ _   
_ _ and we cut our way _ _   
_ _   
_ _ into the core to rid us of the fiber _ _   
_ _ that would stifle every ut- _ _   
_ _ terance between us. _ _   
_ _   
_ _ In our quest for that morsel, _ _   
_ _ how we risked silence, _ _   
_ _ risked even _ _   
_ __ love.

_ -Artichoke by Richard Forester _

* * *

The graffitied menu board stays in the bottom drawer of his desk – he does not take it out, does not look at it. Adam's brash, looping scrawl.

_ Little Tony _ .

They had all called him this, back in the blind white heat-haze of Jean Luc's kitchen. An endless ebb-and-flow of cutlery and flatware, perfectly plated dishes, shattered glass, soaring flames, sweat and screaming and a flawless dance of white-smocked bodies. "Hey, Little Tony!" and "Little Tony, hand me that will you?" and "think you can manage all those plates on your own, Little Tony?"

Back then, at nineteen with his smile already like a knife and his eyes such a shocking shade of blue, somehow Adam Jones had always made the nickname feel like it meant something. Affection? Mockery?

The sight of that old nickname – tumbled so haphazardly across his menu placard – had been a sudden, tight fist around his heart. Sixteen years old again, slopping soapy water in the sink, sallying the finished dishes from the pass to the tables – and Adam.

Adam.

They never bear thinking about, these could-have-been's and maybes and if-only's. And so he keeps the menu board out of sight and decides that it is just enough that Adam is alive, that he has come rocketing back into Tony's life with such vibrance. Still crazy, but better – the glitter of madness is tinged with gold now, where before it had been just broken glass on the Paris streets caught just the right way in the lights to seem like magic before the illusion shattered.

Beyond the frosted glass of the office door something metal-on-metal rings. The hollow skid of a bowl rolling away across the countertops.

The sun has just barely edged itself over the horizon, Tony does not expect to see even his most dedicated staff members for another half-hour still. Because Helene is nothing if not brutally dedicated however, and willing to wring every bit of use from Adam Jones, she arrived with the full stretch of sunlight across London's rooftops, just after Tony had secured himself in the glass office. Adam? Who knows how long Adam has been at his culinary alchemy. Already immersed when Tony arrived, he may not have left the Langham kitchen at all.

Tony keeps the door to the office propped open just enough to let their voices trickle through; Helene's sharp tone and long vowels, Adam's impatient, flat American syllables. So similar, Tony thinks, in the solitude of his office – both of them sharp and capable and bloody-minded. Thank God that Helene, at least, is not fucking crazy. A solid head on that woman's shoulders.

Letting the rise and fall of the debates from the kitchen wash over him, the rattle-bang-crash of the cooking process, Tony sets about tackling the build-up of invoices and itineraries and schedules that require endless precise rearranging and attention. A thousand moving parts just to keep  _ Adam Jones at the Langham _ turning on its axis. Still dusting off their rough spots and patching up the bruises.

But they will be okay. Adam will be okay.

It has to be okay.

He is halfway through organizing the waitstaff schedule for the month when a shadow against the glass alerts him to the slouching figure propped in his doorway. A quick flick of his eyes away from the spreadsheet reveals Adam, arms crossed, dangerously charming, watching him with some still, silent expression.

"Hey Tony."

A warm voice and a crooked smirk should not have such an effect on him. It  _ hurts _ .

Tony turns his attention back to the grid of names and dates and hours – he can schedule Sasha for the extra days, that will cover Kelly's time off for the sister's-cousin's-best-friend's bridal shower – "what is it, Adam?"

"We need a taste-tester."

This is not a game Tony is ready to play. Not today.

He says "I am busy. You know if something tastes good or not."

Adam does not beg – has never begged – only demands in a way that can sometimes be disguised as cajoling. It's the arrogance. But he looks at Tony with that same knife-thin smile that curls crooked at the edges and those cool, insistent eyes and says "c'mon, you need to get out of your office for a bit." Cocks his head and adds like a sly little secret between them "Little Tony."

He hates it. He hates it and he loves it and it kills him.

"I need to have this done before morning service," Tony shakes the sheaf of gridded papers at him, a last plea for mercy.

Adam is cruel. Grants him no quarter. "Work on it out here."

Because Tony is Tony, he will always capitulate. "Fine."

He gathers up the paperwork in the crook of his elbow, hooks a finger through the handle of his coffee mug, and Adam doesn't wait for him to follow. The years and years of training – of books balanced on the crown of his head, dance lessons, tears and screaming over broken dishes – see to it that the surface of the full coffee cup doesn't even shiver when Tony backs through the office door into the open kitchen space.

Helene sighs when she sees him, hands on her hips. "You didn't have let him rope you into this," she says.

Tony settles on the nearest metal stool, raising an eyebrow at her as he hunches back over his coffee mug. "It is not the first time," he mumbles. There is such fondness, such resignation in those wide brown eyes – it tells Helene all she needs to know.

She takes pity on him and snatches up a spoon, dipping in to the saucepan to pass across the counter to him a spoonful of sweetly aromatic caramel-colored drizzle. "Garnishes for the desserts," she explains. "You're our decision maker."

"The  _ profiterole _ ?"

Helene nods.

Taking the spoon, Tony is suddenly sharply aware of Adam's eyes on him. Scooping up his own pot from the stove, the chef lopes back across the silent white kitchen space to crowd up beside Helene and Tony, stirring the mixture slowly, his pale, fearsome eyes never leaving Tony as he waits for the verdict.

The sauce is a good effort – Helene excels with flavor profiles and it is sweet and light and will complement the dessert well, as long as she thins it out to keep it from getting so gluey. It sticks like tar to the spoon and the roof of his mouth the moment it starts to cool in the air and he admits as much, his voice thick and muffled behind his hand.

Helene twists her hands up in her apron, takes the criticism with a self-recriminating scowl and a muttered "damn" as she snatches up the saucepan and spins on her heel - making a beeline for the bin. Tony watches with a wince as she scrapes the sauce out in a slow ooze of thick caramel that makes a soft  _ whuff _ when it hits the bottom of the garbage bag.

She’s almost as bad as Adam with the noise - all clatter and racket with her tools, banging the saucepan into the sink to scrub it clean. The next effort will be perfect in consistency - just thin enough, no longer able to double as sealing putty.

Tony takes the chance to work through a few more lines of his incomprehensible spreadsheet printouts, scribbling in numbers and making corrections, while Helene washes away the remains of her efforts and the line of Adam’s lean spine stretches across the countertop to gather up his own creation in the shiny, stainless steel mixing bowl. 

With the bowl propped on his hip, Adam dips a finger into the mix and comes up with a dollop of whipped cream, white and thick. “You ever heard of aquafaba?” he mumbles around the tip of his index finger, sucking off the gobbet of cream. 

Tony tries not to look too much, afraid of the traitorous flush that blooms hot beneath his skin. He makes some kind of negative noise and shakes his head.

“It’s chickpeas.” Adam’s eyes never leave him, sparkling and pale and waiting for Tony to catch on and acknowledge the genius that is Adam Jones. “You boil ‘em, add a little cream of tartar to the liquid, and go at it with the hand mixer.  _ Voila _ ! Got a nice, thick whipping cream without the dairy flavor.”

From the sink, Helene proclaims “I don’t think it works for the  _ profiterole _ , you can taste the difference too much.” And then, drying her hands on the nearest dish towel, she mutters “if you ask me, we shouldn’t be adding whipped cream to  _ profiterole  _ at all.”

“But I didn’t ask you, did I?” Adam reminds her lightly, all wicked eyes and crooked mouth. “I’m asking Tony.” And then Adam Jones does a terrible thing.

He dips his index finger - the one he has just licked clean - into the bowl of aquafaba  _ again  _ and extends his arm across the pass, the stiff white dollop balanced on the tip of his finger. Like Michelangelo’s  _ Creation of Adam _ . And offering. A silent demand.

And Adam hardly seems to realize what he is doing.

Helpless, Tony flicks a glance at Helene - back to the both of them - at the kitchen ceiling, at the impassive range and clean countertops, at anything and everything in silent plea. He burns hot with shame when he leans across the pass, feels the pink rush of warmth to his cheeks, the tips of his ears. He lays his sweaty palms flat against the countertop and carefully, hesitantly draws the finger coated with aquafaba into his mouth.

The pulse in Tony’s ears beats a fast, panicky  _ oh no oh God oh no oh Jesus Christ what am I doing _ and he feels every slow, agonizing second inch past. Adam’s eyes weigh heavy on him, unblinking. He hardly tastes the aquafaba - barely registers the way it melts on his tongue - and he pulls back as quickly as he can without being obvious, accidentally knocking his jaw against Adam’s outstretched hand.

“So,” Adam prompts “what do you think?”

Tony thinks he is dying. Wildly, his gaze flies around the kitchen searching for something, anything, that isn’t Adam Jones.

"Is good," he manages to hum his approval without choking on his own tongue. It might be terrible. He doesn’t know - is hardly aware of the lingering, delicate taste of it. "Solid, but lighter than dairy-base. Though, maybe a little too beany. Is this all?" 

"Yeah," Adam already has that knot between his eyebrows, rethinking the recipe, plotting out the improvements as he speaks. "Yeah, that's all." 

And then, as Tony turns to gather up his things and escape from Adam Jones's domain, one roughened hand with white smears of whipping cream across the knuckles stretches out to catch his chin and Tony's lungs seize in his chest. 

The calloused pad of a thumb slides across the corner of his mouth and Tony does not breathe, finds himself caught frozen; staring at Adam with wide, terrified eyes as his soon-to-be-three-starred chef draws back his hand and shows him the smear of aquafaba gathered along the edge of his thumb.

“Had a little somethin’ there,” Adam tells him with that familiar, brilliantly wicked shine to his eyes. And then he pops his thumb in his mouth, still twinkling at Tony as the maitre d’ scrambles for his papers, flushed and queasy. 

“I should…” Tony swallows visibly, eyebrows knitting. “The staff will be here soon - I still need to finish the schedule… and the dinner menus?” He is already backing out of the kitchen, stumbling over his words.

“I gotta go over some of the details, but I’ll get ‘em to you before service,” Adam waves him away breezily. “So is the  _ profiterole  _ a yes or a no?”

“Yes. Yes - it’s good. It’s fine.” And Tony beats a hasty retreat back into the secure confines of the office, his mortification hidden away behind the frosted glass walls.

It isn’t five minutes later that David filters in with a cheerful, rumpled good-morning followed by Max who barely manages a grunt. Helene, whisking melting squares of caramel into her saucepan with a vehemence glances at the pair of them as they shrug into their white jackets and then leans across to scold Adam.

“You ought to be nicer to him.”

Adam turns an incredulous look on her. “What do you mean? I  _ was  _ nice.”

Helene makes a disgusted noise. 

For a long while there is silence, the only sound the rasp of the whisk against the bottom of the saucepan, the scraping of a spoon against the edge of a mixing bowl. David sets about chopping scallops, a steady rhythm of the knife against the cutting board. Then, Helene clears her throat and speaks again, this time loud enough that the others can hear.

“It’s my daughter Lily’s birthday on Thursday, chef.”

Adam, busy at the stove, hums. “Okay.”

“I meant to ask -- that is, Conti always used to give me the day off so that I could throw her a party…” Helene twists her fingers in the hem of her apron, turns to face Adam full-on. “I was hoping I could maybe miss the lunch service on Thursday.”

At this, Adam does look up - looks her dead in the face with his steady, frightfully blue eyes. And Helene marvels at just how terribly empty of emotion they seem, just how cold he can be when moments before he had looked so fond, so softly amused. “The problem with being good,” he tells her, “is that you become indispensable. I need you here all day Thursday.”

“Yes chef.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When are these idiots going to get their heads on straight and actually process their feelings? Ugh.
> 
> I apologize if this chapter feels like it's all over the place -- it was written in fits and starts and is the product of a brain that has had too much coffee and too little sleep.
> 
> Update: Chapter now with 50% fewer spelling errors. I did warn you.

Lily melts down and refuses to leave her bed on the morning of her birthday. She kicks and flails at her mother’s efforts to coax her out from beneath the covers, balls her fists in Helene’s shirt, scrunches up her face and bawls her eyes out at the unfairness of it.

It’s her _birthday_. She should have her mother for just this one day at least.

Helene doesn’t know what else to do.

“I’m sorry, Tony,” she tells him over the phone as she pets her daughter’s hair, perched on the edge of the bed. “I know Adam’s already refused me the day off, but -- I just don’t know what to _do_. I can’t bear to leave her so upset. Not today.”

Tony Balerdi’s voice is warm on the other end of the line, gently amused. “ _So don’t_.”

“What?”

“ _Bring her in for the day -- I’ll watch her for you during the service_ .” Tony says it like it’s the simplest solution in the world. And… it is. “ _I’m good with kids_.”

“It’s your day off --”

She can practically hear the little, self-deprecating shrug of his shoulders. “ _And I will probably have spent it working from home anyway -- it’s_ fine, _Helene_.”

Lily watches her mother with wide, curious brown eyes from her blanket cocoon, all frazzled hair and the slow fading of a scowl from between her eyebrows. Helene smooths away that frown with the pad of her thumb, taps her daughter lightly on the nose. “Are you sure?” she presses Tony, offering him one last out.

“ _Yes. Of course_ ,” Tony reassures her patiently. “ _We’ll make sure she has a lovely birthday -- there is no need to worry, Helene_.”

Helene sighs. “You’re a Godsend, Tony.”

That manages to startle a laugh out of the maitre d’. “ _I’m happy to help. I know Adam is a bastard sometimes_ ,” and here it might just be the connection, but it seems that he hesitates for a moment, his voice apologetic. “ _I don’t think he means to be, he just… gets caught up in his own ideas. Forgets that there are other people_.”

It’s sad, really, Helene thinks. The fragile castles in the air that Tony builds around Adam Jones, how willing he is to blind himself and make something bright and good out of a selfish, arrogant bastard. She tells him softly “you don’t have to make excuses on his behalf.”

“ _And you don’t have to worry about Lily -- bring her in while you do the lunch service, and I’ll have a talk with Adam_.”

Lily is thrilled with the plan. A chance to visit her mama’s work, to see the fancy restaurant and play tea party. Helene tells her she must he on her best behavior, wrangles her daughter’s flyaway hair into order, smooths on her best dress, and holds Lily’s small hand in her own as they cross through the park on their way to the _Langham_.

“C’mon, flower,” Helene urges when the restaurant’s facade is in sight. “We can’t be late. If I’m late, the ogre will eat me alive and then where will we be?”

Giggling, Lily scampers to picks up the pace.

Tony meets them on the corner, his hands tucked into his pockets, bathed in the early sunshine. He rocks back onto his heels, smiling brightly at them both, and crouches in the middle of the sidewalk to meet Lily eye-to-eye. “Hello.” He offers her his hand, tilting his head to study the curious, somber expression that drifts across her face. “You must be the birthday girl.”

Slowly, watching him with wary eyes, Lily places her small hand in his own. “I’m Lily,” she says and cannot help the little giggle that escapes when Tony draws the hand up to his mouth and kisses her knuckles lightly.

“Miss Lily,” he says in that dancing, musical accent of his. Helene catches the gleam in his eyes. “My name is Tony, and may I just say what an honor it is to have you with us today?” He is a little silly, a little over-dramatic in his playacting, but there is something sincere about it, something sweet enough that Helene’s feisty little daughter does not scold him for daring to patronize her.

Helene is already tucking up her hair, straightening her clothes as she says “thank you again, Tony. You don’t know how much I appreciate this -- best behavior, Lily darling!” She presses a kiss to the crown of her daughter’s ruffled head, offers Tony another grateful look as they part ways -- Helene heading round to the back of the restaurant and the receiving doors and Tony leading Lily through the wide, glass front doors that sparkle like polished crystalline in the early sunlight.

“Now tell me, Lily,” he asks, guiding her past the reception desk, letting her skip through the entryway. “How many years are we celebrating today? Five? Eleven?”

She bounces on the balls of her white, patent-leather shoes. “Nine.”

“Ooooh, nine. Excellent! A good age to be.” Tony pauses long enough to check the seating chart on the podium, scribbles a note with a nod to Kaitlin across the room, and waltzes Lily between the white-draped tables and fleet-footed waitstaff to a seat by the window with an excellent view of all the London goings on outside.

Lily is quiet and serious and takes her time perusing the lunch service before she makes her choice, ordering for herself with her hands folded gracefully in her lap and a serene, queenly expression on her face. Tony watches, amused and utterly charmed, and thinks he might just try to steal her from Helene.

Conferring for a moment with Yana, Tony takes the order slip himself and stands, saying “will you excuse me, Lily? I’ll deliver our requests to the chef and be right back.”

The little girl’s dark eyes go wide. “Is the ogre in the kitchen?” she asks in a whisper, glancing around as though afraid they will be overhead. “The one who shouts?”

Tony has to bite the inside of his cheek to fight back a laugh. The ogre who shouts. Oh, Adam. Instead, with bright eyes, he quirks his head at Lily and pulls a frowning, puzzled face. “I have no idea who you mean.” He pats her skinny shoulder reassuringly. “I’ll be right back.”

He hardly makes it through the swinging double doors before he is struck by the fug of miserable, simmering energy that has settled over the kitchens. Bickering voices, curse words thrown back and forth, and Adam in the middle of it all with his face like thunder, throwing out his arms and demanding “what’s going on here?!”

“Hello?” Tony winces.

Adam whirls to find Tony on the other side of the pass, his face shifting through a thousand complicated expressions at once. “Tony.” His voice softens. “What are you doing here? It's your day off.”

Tony lays down the slip of paper with a flourish. “Order for table eight,” he says. “I'm with a friend.”

He is in rare form today, Adam thinks, all smile-eyed and bright looking. There is something less stiff in the way he holds himself, less tension in his shoulders, and it makes him look about four years younger -- not that Tony ever managed to look particularly old to begin with. It’s a good look. Strange. One that Tony ought to wear more often

Adam wonders where this has come from, who the _friend_ is that has reserved, fussy Tony Balerdi seeming so playful? He was nineteen when he started in Jean Luc’s kitchen. Tony had been sixteen. They’ve known each other for a long time. And Adam knows that Tony is not the social type -- doesn’t really _have_ that many friends.

They are the same in that respect; they keep people at a careful arm’s length.

“It's her birthday,” says Tony brightly, canting his head. “I want a cake.”

Adam wrenches his mind back to the question at hand. “No.” Immediate, decisive. He doesn’t have time for frivolous extras, not with his staff behaving like sulking children. Not even for Tony Balerdi. “No cake.”

Tony scoffs, eyebrows rising. “You are a chef,” he protests, accent thick and flabbergasted. “You can make cakes, right?”

“No.” He could, though. It wouldn’t be that difficult. But his staff are acting like brats and Tony is here being cheerful and needling and Adam feels the bitter desire to squash it all between his hands. “No cake. I have sorbet.”

And Tony opens his mouth to argue, to protest -- feisty and stubborn as he is -- but Helene’s voice says softly from the _poisson_. “Tony, it’s fine.”

What?

“Tony?” Adam turns slowly, slowly back around to face him. “What’s going on?”

Helene speaks softly to the space above his shoulder, frustrated and apologetic, wringing her hands in her apron. “Chef, Lily didn’t want to stay home today because it's her birthday, so Tony said if I brought her into work, he'd watch her during service.” She offers Tony a guilty glance when she says this, as though she fears the admission will get him into trouble.

Tony, for his part, is not interested in Adam’s bullshit today. He leans across the pass, the color rising in his face, eyes flashing, as he snaps “and she wants a fucking birthday cake, okay? So _make a cake._ ”

And then he is gone, storming back through the kitchen doors in a flurry of indignation, and Adam is left feeling stupid and impotent, nailed to the wall by seven pairs of staring eyes.

Winding his way through the dining room, Tony has to resist the automatic urge to check in with tables, to take orders. He adjusts his tie and tries not to think _damn it Adam Jones, you unbearable bastard_ and settles back into his spot at Lily’s elbow, drawing her into a discussion on school and her hobbies -- she is an _artist_ and she helps her mama cook.

“She teaches me all of her chef secrets,” Lily confides, swinging her legs in the chair with a smile “and I do all the taste testing.”

“Oh, really?” Tony raises his eyebrows as their food is placed before them, thanking Yana softly as Lily scoots herself closer to the table. “So it’s you I have to thank for your mama’s talents, then? She cooks so well because she has you to tell her how it ought to taste?”

Lily preens at that.

“Well,” hums Tony with a look of mischief. “Miss Taste-Tester, you put your finely-honed palate to use and tell me if the food my restaurant serves is any good.” He gestures to her food. “Go on, will you try it? I am desperate for your critique!”

Unable to contain her giggles, Lily forks up a mouthful of her lunch, considering before she nods seriously and makes her pronouncement. “Nice gravy.”

Tony huffs a soft, amused sound. Not quite a laugh. “It's not called gravy anymore.” And then he reconsiders the practicalities of giving a history lesson on sauces to a nine-year-old girl and concedes “well, actually, it's called gravy again.”

He happens to glance up.

Through the double doors, flanked by Misha and Joel -- two of the younger waiters -- Adam appears, gliding across the restaurant floor with a small, perfect pink cake balanced in one hand. His expression, when he locks eyes with Tony, is inscrutable, stony.

 _So you do have a heart, Adam Jones_ , Tony thinks to himself with a smile.

Every time he says it is really done, that he has left his foolish affections behind him where they belong, every time Adam is cruel or terrible he comes back around with something like this. Something lovely and good and painstakingly careful.

Damn it.

Adam sets the cake down before Lily without a word, turns it so that she can take in the carefully piped buttercream roses, the white chocolate slab that reads _Happy Birthday Lily_ in swooping, graceful font. There is something soft in his eyes, scrutinizing Helene’s small, bright daughter who stares him down fearlessly, realization dawning across her face.

“ _You're_ the ogre.”

Adam blinks, but takes it in stride. “Yes,” he agrees. “But I bake great cakes.” And there is definitely a hint of pride, of posturing, for this little nine-year-old. He cuts deftly into the little cake, glancing at Tony out of the corner of his eye, and Tony fels his stomach lurch, cannot help but beam at Adam as he offers up a plate for the slice.

It’s two-layer vanilla cake, the frosting roses made of pink-and-white rosewater swirls, the layers sandwiched together with a filling of strawberries and the aquafaba cream. And Tony’s stomach does another flip at that.

Lily chews her bite of cake with careful consideration, and Tony can absolutely see how Helene has trained her as a taste-tester, the way she deliberates over each flavor and texture. He risks a glance at Adam’s expressionless face, catches the warm amusement in those pale eyes.

“Good?”

Rearranging herself primly on her seat, Lily fixes Adam with a cool look as she twirls the fork. “I've had better.”

Adam sits back, cannot help the smile that twitches at the corners of his lips. “Oh, really?” And he takes the salad fork from it’s place at Tony’s elbow, scooping off a bite of cake for himself. “Hmm,” he muses as he chews. “I dunno… see, I think this is a pretty awesome cake. Are you sure your taste buds have developed properly? Your mom says you’re only nine -- maybe you’re just too young to enjoy this delicious grown-up cake.”

Lily spoons up another helping of frosting, trying not to giggle.

Watching them, Tony is struck stupid by fondness, his insides rendered useless and gooey with a rush of affection. He forces himself to glance away, scans the space of the restaurant, and his eyes land on Helene, lingering in the kitchen doorway. Her smile is gentle.

They are halfway through the lunch service. The dining room is maybe three-quarters full, busy in a steady, easy-paced way. Tony makes a decision. “Well, Miss Lily,” he says lightly. “Thank you for your excellent company, but I think it is time this ogre and I leave you to enjoy your birthday celebrations.” He stands, drawing Adam up alongside him with a hand on his arm.

“I thought you were supposed to be watching her --” Adam frowns, making confused noises as Tony steers him purposefully back toward the kitchen.

Helene’s smile falters when Adam slows before her. “Sorry, chef,” she mumbles “I’ll get back…”

“The lunch service is halfway done, Helene. It’s not so busy.” Tony cuts her off with a wave of his hand. “Adam will manage -- go sit with your daughter.”

She hesitates.

Tony offers an encouraging smile. “It will be fine, Helene.” Adam is apparently too flabbergasted by the maitre d’s sudden steamrolling to protest.

Helene goes, and even from across the room Tony can see the dazzling smile that lights up Lily’s face when her mother sits beside her at the table, the way Lily gestures animatedly to the rose cake, bouncing in her seat.

“We’ll be short-staffed.”

Of all the stupid, feeble protests. Tony waves Adam off, pushing through the kitchen doors. “You’ll be fine.” This is not the nervous, lovestruck fool. This is Tony Balerdi, the greatest maitre d’ in Europe -- capable, steady-minded. For once he has things well in hand. “David, take over for Helene.”

“Hey,” Adam exclaims. “You can’t --”

Dicing onions at the prep table, David freezes like a deer in headlights, glancing between Adam and Tony -- unsure of who to obey.

Tony whirls on Adam, weary of arguing, of feeling heartsore, his expression pleading. _No more arguments_ , he thinks. _Just allow this much, Adam. It won’t kill you_. “Give her one afternoon with her daughter, Adam. Your kitchen will survive without her.”

It’s difficult -- but for someone who knows the details and contours of Adam Jones’s face in intimate clarity, has reconstructed him from memory again and again, Tony spots the way he softens, the concessions in his electric blue eyes. He turns away then, shucking his suit coat, and finds one of the spare aprons hanging on the wall, trading his jacket for its place on the hook.

“What are you…?”

Tony wraps the apron around his waist, deft fingers knotting the strings at the base of his spine. “I am helping. You always forget that you were not the only one to learn in Jean Luc’s kitchens.”

Max snorts, rather disingenuously.

“Oh no.” Adam’s eyes go wide, his voice dangerously stern. “Absolutely not.” It’s just desserts, it must be. All of this is Tony’s vengeance for the hell Adam has put him through for so many years. “You burn water, Tony. You’re a _waiter_ \-- get out of my kitchen.”

Tony feigns innocent surprise. “But then you will be short-staffed?”

“I don’t care.” Adam slaps down his dishtowel, steps back up to the pass. “I’m not dealing with you.”

“Too bad.” The tension in the kitchen is thick enough that Adam could grate it and serve it on top of the caprese as a garnish. The air is alive with electricity, everyone holding their breaths. Even Max and Michel, who know the pair of them -- who have seen Adam’s tantrums and Tony’s spitfire -- look wary. “I may not be Michelin Star material, but I can dice a fucking onion -- keep the service moving. You stand there gawping and the plates will get cold.” Crowding up beside David who is still frozen at the prep counter, Tony makes shooing gestures at the nervous young chef, plucking the knife from his hand and urges “the _poisson_ , David.”

David decides it’s better not to argue.

And Adam… Adam stares for a long, tense moment, and then concedes. Throws up his hands, muttering “fuck it” and accepts that this might as well happen.

Tony chops and dices, rolls up his shirtsleeves and plunges his hands into the sinkful of soapy water, scrubbing a multitude of dishes. He doesn’t mind the work, enjoys the change of pace, remembering the days when he was so young, just starting out in Jean Luc’s kitchen learning the trades. And he watches as Adam’s assembled team works together, building each dish into perfection -- there is no denying it, Adam Jones is undoubtedly third star material. His kitchen runs like a ballet. A study in excellence.

They sail gracefully through the rest of lunch service. It is the quietest the kitchen has ever been -- everyone afraid to speak too loudly, to say anything that isn’t “ready with the scallops” or “coming in with a hot pan” for fear of shattering the strange and tenuous truce that balances on a knife’s edge.

After the service, when they have cleaned the kitchen and set everything to rights, Tony disappears into his office, a barrier of frosted glass between himself and the rest of the _Langham_. He knows that, technically, this is meant to be his day off -- but he is here so he might as well settle in to try and put some of the bookings in order for the rest of the month.

He hardly manages to accomplish a thing; his mind drifting off on tangents, always circling back to the question of Adam Jones, of the _Langham’s_ successes… There are endless worries, fragile hopes, and he threads his fingers into his hair in frustration.

Reality chooses that moment to rap lightly at the door, and Adam Jones does not wait for an invitation before he stick his head through the gap, wrinkling his forehead in surprise. “Tony? What’re you still doing here?”

“I have work to do.”

“It’s your _day off_.” Adam leans fully in the doorway, slouching comfortably.

Tony shrugs. “You may have the kitchen well in hand, but this restaurant does not run itself, Adam.” And there is still a kindling of frustration in his chest -- at himself for being so stupid in love and knowing how foolish, how useless it is. At Adam, for being Adam, such a bastard with so much brightness and potential in him. At all of the work that has piled up every moment of every day on his desk -- and he snaps. Aggravated and weary with the heartache. “I am more than a _waiter_ , Adam. Don’t you dare reduce what I do.”

Adam winces, chagrined. He shifts his weight in the doorway, plants his feet firmly on the floor, and nods -- a sharp, purse-lipped jerk of his chin. “You’re right,” he admits. “You’re right, Tony. I shouldn’t have said that -- I know how much you do. And I’m grateful for it, you’ve got to believe that.” His eyes are honest, raw. “Nobody else would have been willing to give me the second chances you have.”

The softness of his words, the acknowledgment, is like the twist of a knife in Tony’s chest. Sharp, painful. Radiating from his sternum and blooming bright so that it hurts to breathe. He has to look away. “Not second,” he muses. “At this point, is more like third or fourth at least.” So many stumbles in Paris. So many catastrophic crash-and-burns. But he can’t help the faint smile that tugs at his lips when he says it -- just a little bit of needling.

Adam laughs. It’s this side of Tony that he likes so much, rare as it is to see; the quick, sharp wit, the mirth that makes his eyes dance. “You’re probably right,” he agrees.

Oh, they push one another. They antagonize. Adam takes liberties and Tony capitulates and they can’t help but be fond of one another in spite of it.

More than fond. Adam knows -- has always been good at reading people, especially Tony who is as reserved as they come, but who has a terrible poker face. Wears his emotions plain on his cherubic, stubborn face. He is not stupid. He has known since Paris.

He leaves him with a lingering, fond smile and an admonishment. “Don’t work yourself too hard, Tones.”

It is a kindness to them both, in Adam’s mind, to leave the matter unacknowledged.


	3. Chapter 3

Adam may do him the kindness of leaving Tony’s affection quietly unacknowledged but when it comes to the emails that begin to appear, mixed in with the usual restaurant paraphernalia in his inbox, Tony cannot do the same. 

There are death threats that make Tony’s stomach twist itself into a knot. His French is rusty and the emails are riddled with typos, but he manages the gist of it -- reading these diatribes that rail against Adam, demanding money, detailing potential violence. And he doesn’t know if Adam is just too preoccupied with his kitchen or if he is maintaining willful ignorance, but each new email in his inbox is another drag of the knife across Tony’s scraped-thin nerves.

He stops delivering the printed-off emails to Adam, knowing that they will go unread, will be wadded up and pitched into the nearest garbage bin no matter how plaintively he scowls at Adam and begs him to take it seriously. Instead, Tony prints off a copy of each email and collects them all carefully in a folder, keeps them safe within his desk alongside the scribbled-on menu board.

God forbid, he thinks. But there is evidence, just in case.

And then Isaac edges up to him in the middle of the afternoon service, smelling of mouthwash meant to hide the nicotine on his breath, and informs Tony of the presence of a pair of Frenchmen loitering at the kitchen door. Tony thinks of the pages of emails in the folder, the threats from Bonesis and the sums of money, and thinks  _ mierda _ . Shit.

He makes a quick circuit past the door to confirm it, glancing through the thick glass. And Isaac had been right. Two men in dark t-shirts, loitering in the alleyway where the delivery truck parks; arms folded, scowls heavy. Tony does not pretend to know what a Parisian drug lord’s toughs look like -- but there is trouble in the set of these men’s shoulders.

They are in the middle of service.

Tony debates approaching them himself. Asking them exactly what it is they want. But, foolish as he may be sometimes, Tony Balerdi knows exactly what he is -- small and posh and relatively defenseless -- and he does not have a death wish today. 

Still, the last thing he wants to do is tell Adam, dredge up the old spectres of his past -- but the devils have come knocking. And so he steels himself, straightens his lapels, and hastens into the kitchen proper with his heart beating a machine gun stacatto in his throat. What will happen? What do they want? Shit. Shit. Shit.

Hunched over the pass, perfecting each of the dishes, Adam barely glances up to acknowledge Tony when he approaches. His broad, strong shoulders are drawn tight, riding the tension of the kitchen’s rapid pace.

“Adam.” There is no hiding the anxiety that draws Tony’s voice tight. “There are two men at the kitchen door wanting to see you.” He hesitates, letting the words sink in. “They're French.”

Adam ignores him. The dishes are pushed across the pass. “Service!”

Tony twists his fingers into knots, considers leaving Adam to his bullshit and just calling the police. But that risks implicating Adam. That risks all kinds of things. He swallows his unease. “Should I tell them you left half an hour ago?”

“Canapes!” This time, Adam sighs. Snatches the dish towel from his shoulder and slaps it down on the countertop with an unhappy look. “No.” Resigned. “They’ll just come back.”

Suddenly, Adam looks all of his near-forty years. Frustrated. Exhausted. The sins of the past have come back to haunt him. Tony watches it all flicker across his face, wants to take his calloused hands in both his own and reassure him, promise him that they will fix this, that he will find a way to protect Adam from all the old devils.

But he has already tried. Accepting help has never been Adam’s way.

“Michel, to the pass.”

“Yes, chef.” Michel slides smoothly into Adam’s place, trading a wary glance with Tony as Adam turns on his heel and stalks away. As soon as he is out of sight, Michel gestures for David to take his place, falling into step beside Tony. Michel keeps his voice low as they hover at the kitchen door. “Bonesis?”   


Beyond the glass, Adam settles his hands on his hips, standing tall and immovable on the asphalt. Tony nods. His mouth tastes like ashes. “Adam still owes him all that drug money.” He thinks of the terrible, damning sum. Oh, Adam. What did you do to yourself?

“Why don’t you lend it to him?”

As if Tony hadn’t tried. 

“I offered,” he murmurs. Outside, feet shift and shoulders roll -- Adam plants his hand in the center of the Frenchman’s chest and shoves him backward. Tony does not breathe. Can scarcely feel his own heartbeat. “He won't take it.”

_ “No.” Adam looking anywhere but at Tony. _

_ “Adam, please. Just--” _

_ “Absolutey not.” And he had folded his arms firmly across his chest -- let that be the end of it. “I’m not taking your money, Tony. I’m not gonna have you bail me out of my own shit again.” _

_ “Oh, and what’s your solution then?” The envelope thrown down. A heavy  _ thwack  _ of paper against the desktop. “You just ignore it until they jump you in some dark alley, drag you off, and kill you for it instead?” _

_ Adam’s head thrown back, biting out a laugh. A sneer. “Jesus Tony,” he’d sighed “I don’t need your help. You’re so damn naive sometimes.” _

“I don’t know how to help him,” Tony breathes. The three figures outside argue. He speaks mostly to himself. “He is so intent on doing it all alone.”

Michel makes a noncommital sound.

“He’s changed so much,” Tony ignores the way the words lodge in the back of his throat. “He is better - don’t you think? He got himself clean. He works so hard. But… I don’t know.” A hopeless shrug. “Is stupid, maybe I don’t know anything really. But, he tries to do everything himself -- he won’t rely on anyone. Not the staff, not the chefs, not…”

“Not you?”

The look on Michel’s cool face is too knowing, too keenly aware, and too satisfied with the knowledge. Tony feels instantly small and stupid and hot with shame.

“I just worry,” he manages lamely. “He ought to accept help when it’s offered.”

Adam moves like the weight of the world is tied around his ankles when he mounts the steps to the kitchen door at last, glancing back once over his shoulder to be sure that Bonesis’s men are on their way. And Tony catches the weariness in his face, the caged-animal frustration that he smooths over as soon as the door swings open -- feels the fist around his heart give a cruel squeeze at the sight.

“Are you all right?”

He stops himself, just short of reaching out. Of touching.

Adam drags a hand through his short, gelled hair. “Yeah.” The pale eyes wander, seeking out nothing in particular. “Fine.” 

“What did they want?” Tony has to flatten himself against the wall as Adam storms past, narrowly avoids being ploughed over.

“Don’t worry about it.” 

His face is thunderous though, the words curt and hard as a slap. All through the afternoon he is snappish and sharp and ruthlessly demanding in the kitchen. The tension builds in Adam’s shoulders, knots itself in the tendons of his arms, and when three o’clock rolls around, he feels the tick of the clock’s hands like a blow. The old devils chitter and vibrate in his veins. Dr. Rosshilde will be waiting.

She putters around in the sunny office, laying out her kit to take the necessary blood samples, and watches him over the rims of her glasses when she announces “I had dinner with Tony last night.”

Adam slouches in the plush chair, rests his elbows on his knees. There is never any escaping from Tony Balerdi -- not from his soft looks and gentle concern, not from his endless mother-henning and bossiness and impatience. “He wasted his night off with you, huh?”

“We talked a lot about you.” Dr. Rosshilde lifts her eyebrows faintly as she ties the rubber tourniquet around his bicep, and Adam is no fool. He knows that she is fishing, reading him for micro-expressions and subtle tells and whatever psychoanalytical bullshit it is she is trained in.

He raises his eyebrows right back at her, clenches his fist obligingly to raise the veins in his forearm, and asks with a cock of his head “isn’t there a rule that analysts have about discussing patients with other patients?”

Rosshilde shrugs. “I’m not your analyst.”

“Oh thank God.”

And then she asks, blithely, as the needle bites into the juncture of his elbow “you know he’s in love with you, don’t you?”

_ Oh, Tony _ . She says it so bluntly, the words matter-of-fact and presented without emotion so that they sink like a stone in the silence; a heavy weight in the pit of Adam’s stomach. He squeezes his fingers, feels the sting of the needle in his vein. “Yes.”

Tony loves him… is in love with him. The poor bastard. Adam knows -- has known this all along, had known in Paris when they were so young and hungry, and he’d known it the moment Tony had let himself into the hotel room, prickly and flustered and with that same liquid light suffused into his warm brown eyes. 

She does not leave it there, though. Rosshilde replaces the full vial with another, watching him all the while, and continues speaking. “He didn’t relaunch the restaurant to impress his father -- he did it for you.” 

Adam knows. Christ, he knows -- had staked everything on it the moment his plane had touched down in London -- and he wishes she wouldn’t say it.

“Yeah.”

The needle is removed, a square of gauze taped neatly over the puncture. “He wants to see you get your third star,” Rosshilde hums “even after all the pain you’ve caused him.” And she continues to muse aloud in her posh, clipped voice as she stands, packing away the kit and the triplicate vials sloshing dark with Adam’s blood. “He wants to see what you’d be like without a knife in your hand, fighting for your life.”

Is this what Tony talks about in therapy? About Adam?

She shouldn’t be telling him this. Adam doesn’t want to know how much faith Tony has in him, doesn’t want to think about just how badly he can let him down -- about what the softness in Tony Balerdi’s toffee-colored eyes really means.

“You know,” Adam bites back, bristling. “People pay prostitutes extra to fake orgasms. Maybe Tony pays you extra to fake concern.”

Rosshilde snorts, cutting him a disparaging look. “Oh, don’t fool yourself,” she assures him coolly. “Tony doesn’t pay me to show concern -- he pays me to hold up a plain mirror to the world, to him, and show him reality for what it is. Show him himself for who he is. Not what his anxieties lead him to believe.”

She shouldn’t be telling him any of this. It curdles in Adam’s stomach like ice water in an empty belly, the frankness with which she strips away Tony’s armor and bears the fragile, vulnerable truths -- it isn’t right. It isn’t fair to Tony. Adam doesn’t want to hear this, he  _ shouldn’t  _ be hearing this.

“Tony’s anxious.” The words fall numb, unbidden from his lips.  

Rosshilde nods. “Tony is anxious,” she confirms. “He has a terrible self-image, he’s fiercely repressive and perfectionistic -- in many ways, you and he are mirror images. You explode. He shuts down.”

Adam’s insides churn. He lurches upright, the chair skittering, screeching backward on the linoleum. “I don’t have to listen to this.”

“Tell me what frightens you.”

Where is the door? He needs to go -- he has to get out of here. “Spiders,” he manages flippantly. “Clowns.” 

_ Tony _ , he thinks.  _ Jesus Christ, Tony, you pay her to treat you like this too _ ?

“Or, maybe, the imperfection of human relationships. The imperfection of others. Of yourself?” The doctor stands to follow him, a juggernaut flow of movement and psychoanalysis badgering Adam as he paces. “What happens if you get this third star?”

Adam whirls on her, eyes alight. “Oh, not if. There is no if.” There can be no ‘if’ in this equation. Not for him. “ _ When _ .”

“All right,” she concedes. “ _ When _ you get it.”

“Celebration.” Adam throws out his arms, gesturing ineffectively. Grasping for the words in the doorway of Dr. Rosshilde’s office flat. “Sainthood. Immortality.  _ Perfection _ .”

She lifts her fair eyebrows above the over-large spectacles. “And if you fail?”

He can’t. He  _ cannot  _ fail. Not this time. “Plague, pestilence, seas rise, locusts devour.” The thought sits heavy in his core, black and poisonous and fearful. “The four horsemen ride and darkness descends.” 

“Death.”

He shrugs. “Sure.” 

She looks at him like she knows, like she can see into his soul. But she doesn’t -- she  _ can’t  _ know. “Okay,” she says, leaning in the doorway. “This is for free. Someone told you when you were very small that you were good, and the world was good, and everything naturally would be good. And then the serpent served you a bad apple -- and for all your bullshit you can’t take bad. Not in a souffle, and not in an apple. And, crucially, not in a person.”

He wants to throw up. He wants to hit something to quell the old devils that itch and vibrate in the tendons of his wrists. The words eek out between clenched teeth. “You serve that kind of bullshit to Tony, too?”

Rosshilde ignores the jibe, insisting “whatever it was or whoever it was in the past, it’s time to get on with it.” And for a moment -- just a moment, Adam flinches. Thinks  _ it was everyone _ . Everyone right up until Jean Luc. Tony. The first people to _see_ him -- to have faith in him. The brilliant, bright-burning days in Paris that he had reduced to ashes. “And you can’t do this alone -- there’s strength in needing others. It’s not weakness.”

Adam tastes acid on his tongue. “Make sure to thank Tony for those kind thoughts, Doc.”

She waves him off with a smirk and those all-knowing eyes. “Oh, that wasn’t Tony. He’s as bad as you are in that regard. That was all me.”

And Adam flees.

_ Christ, Tony _ . He thinks.  _ What the hell is this _ ?


	4. Chapter 4

Adam does his best to drown the good doctor’s words in the shower -- to rinse the jangle of discordant, echoing thoughts from his head with the hotel’s seemingly endless supply of hot water, cranked up until it nearly scalds him.

_ He’s in love with you… even after all the pain you caused him… _

The bathroom is thick with moisture -- steam beading on the mirrors. Every breath is heavy, an effort to drag air into his lungs.

_ What would you be like without a knife in your hand, fighting for your life? _

Adam bows his head under the drum of the shower’s spill. He doesn’t know...

_ Tony’s anxious. In many ways, you and he are mirror images. _

The old track marks in the crook of his elbows itch. Barely visible scars. But he knows they’re there -- can feel them.

_ What happens if you get this third star? _

He knows he is good -- better than good. One of the best.  _ The  _ best. There is no questioning the quality of Adam Jones, the chef. But Adam Jones, the man? A clusterfuck. There is no hope there. 

_ And if you fail? _

_ If you fail? _

He doesn’t hear the light rapping on the door over the pattering of water against the tiles, gurgling down the drain. The quiet voice that calls “Adam?” 

_ There’s strength in needing others… _

Muted footsteps on the carpet disappear beneath the clatter of the curtains being drawn back. 

_ But you’re going to fail, Adam. You’ll drag all of them down with you _ .

Adam chafes the towel over his wet skin, quick and perfunctory, slings it low around his waist as he steps out of the shower. The suite beyond the open bathroom door is brighter. There’s a soft clearing of the throat, uncertain, and he doesn’t want to deal with Tony. Not right now. Not after the meeting yesterday with Rosshilde and her words still rattling around in his skull.

“Adam?” Tony calls again. His voice wavers. “The maids don’t come?”

“I always leave the ‘ _ do not disturb _ ’ sign on.” Adam scrounges on the bathroom floor for his jeans. Spits a gob of toothpaste into the sink. The angle of the mirror above the sink is just so that he can glimpse Tony, puttering around the room -- catches the way his shoulders draw up, stiffening at the pointed comment.

_ Tony is anxious. _

“We have a laundry service as well.” Adam watches in the mirror as he putters around the room, all nerves and fidgety hands, making an ineffectual effort at tidying the suite. 

“I’m well aware, Tony.” He is aware, too, of the warm flush of pink across Tony’s cheeks -- bright at the tips of his ears -- when he ambles out of the bathroom, tugging the shirt over his head. “What do you want?”

Tony fishes in the inner pocket of his suit, drawing out the neat, cardstock envelope. “You have an invitation. Montgomery Reece invites you to the relaunch of his restaurant.” A faint knot appears between his eyebrows. “I thought he hated you?”

Adam takes the invitation with a snort, leaving damp thumbprints on the paper. “He does. That’s why he invited me.” It’s all creamy paper and flowing, loopy calligraphy --  _ cordially invited _ , as if. “Tell him yes.” 

“Well.” Tony clears his throat, scarcely risks looking Adam in the eye for more than a heartbeat. There is something, something at work in that head of his. What is he thinking? What proposal is he struggling with now? “If you go, take someone with you. Someone who will stop you getting into a fight with him,” he amends.

“What?” Adam bites off the question, looking Tony up and down from his vantage point at the foot of the bed. “You mean like you?”

It comes out cruel, harsher than he intended -- all of his own hatred and bitterness spiraling outward, landing like a blow across Tony’s open face.

“I…” Tony gapes. The flush that spills below the collar of his shirt betrays him. “No.”

“Your therapist’s got a big mouth.” 

Salt rubbed in the wounds. Whose wounds, Adam couldn’t say -- something in him is raw and stinging, an exposed nerve -- and he wants to see Tony hurt. Wants to inflict the same vulnerability onto him.

And Tony falters badly; takes in Adam’s words and suddenly seems to shrink. Small and embarrassed, he attempts to wave away the unspoken fact laid down between them, the thing that has gone so long unacknowledged. Dismisses it with a shrug and a quiet, shame-faced “nothing you didn’t know.”

“No, Tony, I  _ didn’t  _ know.” All of the frustration rises up, catching in his chest; a tangle of knotted, tearing barbed wire. Fists clenching in the bed sheets, a muscle twitching in his jaw. He wants to be cruel. He cuts cold, winter blue eyes away from Tony. “I mean, sure, you have a big gay crush on me -- that’s blatantly obvious -- but you  _ love  _ me?” He feels himself sneering, snarling, and he hates it. “And, all that bullshit about your anxiety and your perfectionism -- we’re ‘mirror images’? What  _ was that _ ?”

Tony looks like he is about to throw up.

His eyes, grown wider and wider with Adam’s tirade, are glossy. Staring. All of the color drained from his face as he sucks in his cheeks, considering. Struggling to hold the cracked, jagged edges of his composure in place lest the mask slip -- lest something terrible and shameful escape him now.

_ He didn’t know _ .

“Oh shit.”

Adam is on his feet in an instant, stumbling over himself; only the one shoe on. And Tony -- Tony  _ flinches _ . Draws up his shoulders and ducks his head, cringing away from him in a way that makes Adam’s stomach lurch.

_ Aw, no _ . He thinks.  _ Oh God, Tony, no _ .

Whatever this is -- whatever catastrophe Adam has plunged them headlong into -- he never, never wanted Tony to look at him like this. To be afraid.

“Tony. Wait a second…”

But Tony is already backing toward the door. Shaking his head. Trying so hard to hold himself together. “Please.” The words strangle in his throat. “Please, don’t.”

He gets his hand around the doorknob.

And then he flees.

“Tony, wai --  _ damn it _ .” Adam curses, pauses just long enough to cram the other shoe on. By the time he lunges into the hallway, hits the bank of elevators, Tony has already vanished.

* * *

 

In the elevator, counting down the floors, Tony wedges himself into the corner and presses one trembling hand to his mouth. Not now. Not now -- he can’t afford to break, not in the middle of the hotel where everyone can see. But his knees wobble, threaten to give way beneath him, and it’s all he can do to stifle the sob that catches at the back of his throat.

“Shit.” He chokes on the curse, knocks his head back against the paneling. “Shit. So  _ stupid _ .” How badly he had wanted to pretend…

Idiot.

How did this happen? How could he let himself be such a fool?

It is early still, thank god, and when he hits the lobby it’s a straight shot through to the dining room. The Langham. Their restaurant, Adam’s miracle, where anything -- everything -- is possible. A lie. The grey London sunlight off the white tablecloths, the perfectly arranged dishes and polished cutlery, makes Tony’s stomach curdle.

He’s been such a fool. Deluded. Blinded.

There is nowhere safe in the hotel, in the restaurant. No place for Tony to shut himself away, to curl up and shatter softly. His flat feels so far away -- nothing comforting there anyway. There is lunch service in a few hours. To flee would be to concede defeat, to admit to Adam his shame. His devastation.

An hour.

It’s all he can afford himself -- an hour, secreted away behind frosted glass and a simple deadbolt. Cheap protection. An hour to cry, to be sick into the wastebasket, and pull himself back together in time to work.

He doesn’t make it that far.

The moment he hits the kitchen --  _ Adam, Adam, Adam. He hates me. I’ve ruined everything. How did this happen? _ \-- the wounded, awful cry built up behind his ribs bursts against his lips, shatters ugly and ragged against the silence.

Tony catches himself hard, both hands braced on the cool, white tile of the pass. His whole body is spasming, contracting, siezing up against his will. He gasps and gulps and trembles, struggling to breathe around the shape of a sob that wells in his chest, fights the panic that tightens against his lungs. 

_ Your big gay crush on me -- that’s blatantly obvious. _

The tears fall hard and fast, then, and there is no hope for it.

“Shit!” 

It isn’t fair. It shouldn’t tear him up like this -- it was always impossible. A pipe dream of the worst kind. But… 

_ All that bullshit about your anxiety and your perfectionism _ ?

What did Adam know? What had Dr. Rosshilde  _ said _ ?

He can’t… He can’t.

His hands shake.

“Tony?”

A terrible crash. From beyond the wide, double-doors of the Langham’s kitchen, comes the unmistakable rain of ceramic shards on tile. Broken dishes. Adam knows it anywhere.

“ _ Tony?! _ ” 

He stops short, two steps into the kitchen. The doors swinging silently on their hinges behind him. Oh, Tony. White-knuckling the lip of the counter like his life depends on it, spine bowed and shoulders shaking, the remains of a plate scattered in a nonsense constellation on the floor. And he gives a full-bodied shudder at the sound of Adam’s footsteps, at the weight of his presence in the empty kitchen.

“What?” Tony’s musical, quick voice is thick. Muted. “What is it?” He does not turn around. “What more do you want from me, hmm?”

Adam risks another step closer, fumbling for the words. An apology? An excuse? He is no good at mending broken things, and the carefully built thing between them is so badly shattered. “Look, Tony. I --”

“You have your restaurant,” Tony’s breath hitches. “You will have your third star soon enough. You have everything I would ever give you if you asked -- but you just had to… you had to have…” Tony chokes on a sob, swipes the back of his hand across his pink, blotchy face; unable to force himself to look Adam in the eye. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone -- you had to have the satisfaction.”

“Tony you have to believe me --”

And then Tony does turn, faces Adam with hunched shoulders and a wounded, bitter smile. Spreads his hands and gestures the length of himself, head to toe. “It’s pathetic, no? My big gay crush? You just  _ had  _ to twist the knife. Are you happy?”

“No.” Adam’s answer is instant. His voice too sharp, too loud in the silence. “No, Tony, I’m not.” He never exactly gave Tony any inclination to think any better of him, but it stings. Happy to see Tony so crumpled up with humiliation, stripped bare and devastated by the admissions that should have been left to lie? Even Adam is not so low. He rakes his hands through his hair, looking helplessly around the sterile, empty kitchen space. “I’m not happy at all -- I hate this. I hate it and, Jesus Christ, I’m sorry, but -- will you just give me a second to explain? Please?”

Tony Balerdi has never been able to deny him anything.

An ache like pressing on a bruise blooms behind Adam’s third and fourth ribs when Tony nods, a loose lock of caramel-colored hair flopping across his forehead. “Here,” he says, reaching for a fistful of brown paper towels from the dispenser beside the sink. He offers them to Tony in a wad, feeling stupid and insufficient. “C’mere, wipe your face.” 

Tony does so, blotting at tears and leaking snot, and Adam averts his eyes -- affords him a moment to compose himself.

Then, Adam leans his hip against the counter, folds his arms across his chest, and proclaims with quiet certainty, “Tony, you’ve got a shrink who knows fuck all about patient confidentiality.”

Tony sniffles. Stares. Uncomprehending.

“I saw Rosshilde yesterday,” Adam says. “She drug tested me -- and while she had a needle in my arm she told me all about how she’d had dinner with you, how you’re in love with me, and how you’re a complex bundle of neuroses.” Anxious. A terrible self-image. Perfectionistic. He shuts down while you explode. “I thought --  _ fuck _ . Tony, I don’t know, I thought you’d asked her to tell me all that. Some kind of mindfuck or…” He throws up his hands, helpless.

“ _ No _ .” Stricken, Tony stumbles over himself, stammering out an effort to correct Adam’s assumption. “No, I never -- I would never…” He shakes his head, swallows down the rest of the protests. Adam watches as he starts to shrink again, shoulders migrating toward his ears. “I didn’t want you to know. These things -- I never wanted you to know. Not like this.” Not laid so plainly between them, naked and pitiful and humiliating in the light.

And Adam can’t help it -- he reaches instinctively for Tony, cups his elbow in the cradle of his palm, catches him by the shoulders and pins him in place before Tony can retreat again. Before he can run. “I know. I know, if I’d pulled my head out of my own ass for a minute I’d have realized, you don’t play games like that. You never have.” He draws Tony -- rigid and unyielding as cast iron -- into his arms, folds him close and rests his chin on Tony’s head, the soft hair tickling his throat. “Let me cook you breakfast.”

The offer runs through Tony like a shock and he shoves Adam off, the despair eating into his core like acid. “You mean instead of falling in love with me.”

“I--” Adam blows out a sigh, fighting down the frustration that rises instantly to the surface. That got then nowhere last time. “Look, Tony, what do you want?”

Tony deflates. He smooths fingers through his hair, irons his lips into a thin, tight line. “Can we forget it all?” He asks. “Pretend like it never happened and you never heard anything that Doctor Rosshilde told you?” A glance at Adam tells him all he needs to know. “No. I didn’t think so.” Sighing softly, he shakes his head, dismissing the idea. Fool’s hope. “You said, in your restaurant, that everything was possible. But, I know not everything is possible.”

Adam offers him a fond, weary look. The poor bastard. Tony deserves so much better. “Am I making you crepes or no?”

“Cinnamon and banana, please.” Tony directs this request to the countertop, scratching the tip of his nose.

“I know.” 

Adam smiles to himself, already heading for the industrial fridge. Making a quality crepe is easy enough he can do it in his sleep, requires no real brain power, and he watches out of the corner of his eye as he fires up the stove as Tony lingers for a moment -- bereft -- in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the remains of the plate shattered on the floor. At last, he fixes his tie, rolls his shoulders, and goes in search of the broom and dustpan.

When the shards of ceramic are all cleared away, Tony draws a stool up to the counter and watches silently, twisting his fingers in his lap.

Adam chops perfectly even circles of banana, considering, and offers “you need a better therapist, Tones.”

“I don’t think --” Tony shifts on the stool, drawing his eyebrows together. “She must have had a reason.” Something unsettled and miserable churns in his stomach, some dark and anxious thoughts that he hurries to squash. Dismissive. “I’m sure she thought she was helping…”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.” Adam moves back and forth between prep and the stovetop, feigning focus on the crepe taking form in the skillet. “You trusted her and she broke that trust, Tony -- I don’t care if she thought she was helping you or me or herself, she had no right to tell me your private shit.”

“Adam --”

Lifting his eyes from the skillet, Adam flips the thin crepe expertly in the pan, watching Tony’s expression as he does so. “You didn’t deserve that.” Tony doesn’t say a word. “You don’t deserve to be treated like that, Tony.”

“Except by you?” Tony stares up at him then, briefly defiant and bright with that stubborn, irate set to his mouth.

Adam plates the crepe smoothly, folding in the banana slices, sprinkling cinnamon and powdered sugar liberally. Tony has a sweet tooth -- won’t ever admit to it, though. And Adam wants to indulge him, wants to present him with the most perfect of crepes; a meager apology, a small penance done after he’s gone and fucked everything over. “No.” He does not take his eyes off Tony for a moment as he sets the plate before him. “Especially not by me.”

Tony flushes -- a faint smudge of pink across his cheekbones, spreading down into the collar of his shirt. “Thank you.”

A shrug. Adam brushes the back of his knuckles up Tony’s arm, gives him a fond nudge. And then, because he can never leave well enough alone, he dusts the powdered sugar from his hands and reaches out to skim a hand over Tony’s hair, cups the back of his neck and squeezes lightly.  _ Little Tony _ , he thinks.  _ All that time since Paris and you still can’t shake it, can you? _

_ You should’ve picked someone else to love, you poor bastard _ .


	5. Chapter 5

They don’t quite avoid each other -- it isn’t possible, working in such close proximity, and avoidance feels too much like a concession, an acknowledgement of something damaged and uncertain between them now. But Tony no longer lingers in the kitchen making small talk, keeps his eyes down and spares no more words than necessary, none of his soft smirks or fond looks. It isn’t a cold shoulder turned toward Adam, not really, but Tony closes himself off -- locks away the most vulnerable, wounded parts of himself in shame. Fear.

It’s strange, how acutely Adam feels the loss. Like a missing limb. Something that was always just  _ there _ , now gone cold. Wrenched away.

The invitation to Reece’s reopening hangs over his head, spoiled. He could ask Tony -- and, maybe he should have, he might have, before he’d burnt it all to ashes. Little Tony. Adam. Reece. A chance to reminisce, to remember Paris and Jean Luc and the days when they were all still so young and bright together.

The thought leaves a taste like citrus peel in his mouth; dry and thick and bitter. And so he ignores it. Lets the days trickle by with Tony unwilling to meet his eyes across the pass, with Helene or Michel at his elbow, and he fixates on perfection. Every dish is exquisite, cooked flawlessly, plated without a single sprig of rosemary out of line.

Adam feels like flying apart -- like all the pieces of him will go spiraling outward in some great and terrible explosion -- and so he pulls it all tighter to his chest. He does not yell. He does not throw cutlery or shatter plates. He makes sure everything is perfect. He remembers to breathe. And in the back of his mind he wonders when the whole illusion will fragment, fracture, and fall down around their ears.

They have not yet hit the breakfast rush. Orders are only just starting to trickle in -- and in the relative lull of the morning, Tony appears in the kitchen. Adam watches him through his eyelashes, head bent over the plates he is dusting with a light snow of powdered sugar; sees the way Tony rolls his shoulders, steels himself, and strides toward him.

A soft clearing of the throat. “Orders for Table Six.”

Adam lifts his head, dusts his hands off his apron, and takes the slip of paper, pinning it in place with the other orders waiting to be filled. “Thanks Tony.”

But Tony does not drift away -- he lingers. Hesitating. “Adam?”

“Yeah?”

“I need the menus for dinner service before noon, if you can.” Tony scratches the tip of his nose, looks anywhere but right at Adam when he makes his request.

Something in Adam deflates. “Sure,” he says. “Yeah, of course. I’ll have ‘em done for you before eleven -- okay?”

“Okay,” Tony nods. “Eleven. That’s good, yes. Thank you.”

And then he is gone again.

Adam sinks into himself after that, becomes surly and monosyllabic -- focuses all of his attention on the plates that come across the pass and puts up blinders to block out everything else. The guilt might just eat him alive.

“You’re quiet.” Helene slides a plate beneath his nose, gently needling. “I’m not complaining -- but you’re starting to make David nervous.” She frowns, seeing the shadow of thunder that sits heavy on his brow. “What is it?”

Adam shrugs. “I’m trying this new thing called ‘good behavior’.” An apology. Penance. He feels chewed up and scummy and cruel -- a toddler only capable of breaking anything good placed in his too-rough hands. “Tony’s pissed at me.”

“Pffft.” Helene rolls her eyes so emphatically Adam is surprised they don’t keep rolling right out of their sockets and drop onto the plate. “Honestly, the  _ last _ thing that man is is pissed at you, Adam. But the two of you are acting like a pair of wet paper bags -- what’s happened?”

“Wet paper bags?” He raises an eyebrow at her, uncomprehending.

“Soggy. Pathetic.” She flaps an impatient hand at him, plates their second order and passes it across the counter for final inspection. “You’re dodging my question.”

“Yeah,” Adam agrees, rankled. “I am.” He draws a perfect comma of sweet sauce along the outer edge of the dish, the muscles of his shoulders bunched up with the effort of careful precision. “Service!”

The plates are whisked away by Yana.

Helene leans her hip against the cool surface of the pass, flips the dishtowel over her shoulder. She has a nine-year-old. She can play the waiting game.

Adam slumps. Speaking low enough that only Helene can hear him above the background cacophony of kitchen noise, he confesses “we fought. Tony and I.” And then he reconsiders the words and says “no. No, we didn’t fight.” He risks a look in Helene’s direction, offers her a crooked, bitter grimace of a smile. “Too ugly for a fight -- more of an emotional blowout if you really want to parse it.”

“What about?” Helene has a few guesses.

“What’s it matter?”

Helene folds her arms, scowling beneath the flop of her fringe. “Shockingly,” she tells him “when you aren’t a controlling asshole, I’m actually a little bit fond of you.” And she gestures for him to continue.

Adam softens a little. “I said things I shouldn’t have -- stuff between us that was better left buried. I don’t know.” He shakes his head, sick with the memory. Tony’s brown eyes bright with tears. The shattered plate.  _ Sure, you have a big gay crush on me -- that’s blatantly obvious _ . “I wasn’t thinking straight and I was angry and I took it all out on him.”

“ _ Oof _ .” Helene screws up her face with sympathy. She has seen Adam cruel and angry and out to wound now, has seen Tony bright with fire and fury. It is easy to imagine just how ugly the scene had been. “I’ll be honest with you, I’m amazed it didn’t happen sooner. I couldn’t imagine working with my ex.”

Adam scatters the spoonful of scallops across the countertop.

What.

“ _ What _ ?!”

He’s loud enough that the rest of the kitchen staff freeze -- just for an instant -- wide-eyed and all looking warily to their chef. All at once, Helene realizes she has said something very, very wrong.

Adam, with a muscle in his jaw twitching, manages to grit out “Michel to the pass” as he catches Helene by the elbow and tows her toward the back door. “You’re taking your smoke break early.”

“Shit,” Helene mutters, stumbling in his wake. “Jesus, what’s the matter with you?”

The moment their feet hit the asphalt, the door closed behind them, Adam whirls on her with wild, manic eyes and all but wails “my  _ ex _ ?!”

Confronted with the evidence, Helene can admit that her intuition was certainly a little bit left of the mark, but she tucks her hands up under her armpits -- defensive -- and juts out her chin at him. “Well, it seemed like the obvious conclusion.” She shrugs. “I mean, the way the two of you act, the whole  _ history _ . And,” Helene hesitates, unwilling to divulge more, to throw Tony into the line of fire. “Well, he’s obviously in love with you.”

Adam winces. 

“There’s not anything -- we were never…” He can’t quite find the right words to protest. “We were all training together under Jean Luc; me and Max and Michel and Reece. And Tony. This was ages ago, back in Paris -- we’ve known each other forever now.” And Adam scrubs at the back of his neck, paces the cracked asphalt like a caged animal. Impatient. Uncertain. “Tony? I don’t know… I didn’t want to acknowledge it. But then things happened, and he’s been carrying this torch for a _long time_ , Helene and I called him out on it like a big giant asshole and I was _terrible_ to him.”

Helene scrapes a hand over her scalp, tips her head back to blink up at the overcast London sky. “Jesus Adam.” She is not prepared to deal with this. She has handled nine-year-old meltdowns and emotional turmoil, has bullied herself through a divorce, has fought tooth-and-nail with chefs and restaurant managers. And she is  _ not  _ prepared to handle the chaotic cesspool of emotions and relationship issues Adam seems keen on offloading onto her.

“I know,” he sighs. “I know.”

_ Poor Tony _ , the thought lingers at the back of Helene’s mind.  _ Poor, poor Tony Balerdi falling for such a mixed up mess of a man _ . But then, to be fair, Helene would admit she didn’t have the strongest of legs to stand on in the ‘taste in men’ department.

“Well the two of you can’t just keep avoiding each other making sad eyes, forever,” Helene decides. “Not if your working relationship is going to survive -- not if the  _ restaurant  _ is going to survive. At some point you’re going to have to talk to him.  _ Like a grown up _ .” And if this is the same tone of voice that commands Lily to eat her healthy breakfast or pick up her toys off the floor of her room, Helene is not above wielding that to her advantage.

Adam nods. A frantic, too fast, bobbing of his head, looking anywhere but at Helene. “You’re right,” he admits like it pains him. “Damn it, you’re right.” And he whirls away from her, storms off down the delivery truck ramp. Comes shuffling back with a wild look in his eye. “Why the hell did you think Tony was my  _ ex _ ?”

That, Helene can’t quite explain -- not if he can’t manage to see it for himself. “He  _ loves  _ you, Adam. For all he tries to hide it, anyone with eyes can see that. And,” She considers her words very, very carefully. “For all that you’re a bastard, anyone with eyes can see that you’re fond of  _ him _ .”

He is.

And so Adam swallows his pride and screws his courage to the sticking place and ducks his head into Tony’s office with the revised dinner menu at exactly eleven o’clock, as promised.

At first, Tony doesn’t notice him in the doorway. His slim fingers dart across the keyboard, composing and reading over emails, eyes glowing caramel-golden in the light from the monitor’s screen as he skims the lines. His posture is terrible when he works at the computer; for all that he is graceful and ballet-perfect when he swans between the tables, he hunches atrociously over the keyboard, cranks his neck. Deep in concentration, his lips part softly, forming the words in the screen in silence as he reads.

Adam clears his throat. “Tony?”

He hates it, the way Tony startles -- flinching -- at the sound of his voice.

“Oh. Adam.” Blinking owlishly around the edge of the monitor, Tony looks him warily up and down, catching sight of the scrap of paper Adam clutches in his hands like a shield. “You have the menu? Good. Thank you. Just leave it here, please.”

There is something so careful about him, so cool and bland. None of the warmth, none of Tony’s wit or softness. It is a fragile, painfully constructed mask -- a wall built between them.

Adam steps into the office, lays the finished menu in his scrawled handwriting on the desk beside Tony’s elbow. And he might just leave it at that, but he draws a breath and says “look. I think we need to talk.”

In the same moment, the words come tumbling out of Tony “Adam, there is something you need to see.”

They both stare at one another in the silence.

“I owe you an apology, Tony,” Adam rushes to confess, guilty and earnest. “A proper one.” He holds up a hand when Tony opens his mouth to protest. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’ve been wound-up and neurotic and I was angry and I took it all out on you -- and that wasn’t fair.”

“ _ Adam _ \--”

“You’ve been nothing but good to me, Tony,” Adam persists. And, God, the admission hurts. “When anyone else would’ve spit in my face or thrown me out on my ass, you still gave me another chance.”

Tony’s smile -- small and fragile as it is -- is like sunshine in the small office space. “I did try,” he murmurs. “I did try and throw you out. But somehow you came back.”

Adam chuckles at that, feels the warm swell that rises like helium to fill his chest. “I’m like a bad penny that way.” In so many ways, he thinks. He keeps coming back. Keeps cropping up again and again to ruin things, to reopen old wounds. “You deserve so much more than to be hung up on me forever, Tony. You could do so much better.”

And Tony’s face does something complicated, goes through several uncomfortable emotions. “I am content, Adam. Thank you for your concern.”

“I just meant --”

“I have a restaurant that is full at every service.” Tony spreads his arms to encompass the office space, raises his eyebrows. “I have a head chef who is a culinary rockstar and a team of chefs beneath him who are beyond capable. I have a waitstaff who listen to me, who do not fuck up, because I have trained them all myself. My father is a happy man. You are my friend.” Tony smiles, baring his teeth. It almost looks like a cringe. “ _ I am content _ .”

_ Is that all there is for you, Tony? _ Adam braces his hip against the edge of the desk.  _ This restaurant? Your staff? This is your whole world? _

“Now.” Tony sits up straight in the chair, pivots the sleek computer monitor on the desk so that Adam can see. “Look at this. Another letter for you -- if nothing else, as a result of this my French has improved vastly. His threats are very colorful.”

Adam scans the email. Signed from Bonesis.

Fuck.

“Look -- is an easy thing to clear the debt, no? I don’t see why you won’t just…” And Tony is babbling, his voice a musical wash of nonsense that Adam can’t be bothered to hear.

“No. Absolutely not.” Adam straightens, thunderous. “I’m not taking money from you to pay him off, Tony.”

“I’m not asking you to -- if you’d just…”

“We aren’t having this conversation. Bonesis is my problem, Tony. My mistakes. Not yours.” Adam turns on his heel, stalking for the door. “I’ll pay for them myself.”  _ I won’t drag you down with me again _ , he thinks even as the bright look of hurt on Tony’s face guts him like a knife.  _ I’m throwing you off the ship before it sinks, Tones. This is a favor. _

“Adam --” And Tony gives up on pleading. “How do you intend to fix your problems if you keep running from them, hm?”

“I dunno, Tony,” Adam lingers in the doorway. “Maybe I’ll just keep running.”

The parting words, flung at Adam’s back with a snarl, sting. “Yes. You’re good at that, aren’t you?”

* * *

Later, Adam is still furious and frustrated -- hovering over his team’s shoulders, incapable of being still, demanding some ounce of control. It is two days before the reopening of Reece’s restaurant and he is in the middle of checking twelve different things at once for the dinner service, leaning across Helene’s workspace -- “oh, you’ve got to thin this sauce. It's like fucking glue.” -- when she asks him about his talk with Tony.

They are no longer avoiding each other. Conversation is no longer stilted, painful. But there is still an undercurrent of something -- if Tony wasn’t pissed at him before he is now, pissed that Adam won’t take his money and handle Bonesis and his drug debts.

But Adam  _ can’t _ . He can’t do that to Tony. It feels too much like exploitation.

He doesn’t know how to explain this to Helene -- doesn’t want to untangle for her his bedraggled, thorny history and all the ugly things contained therein. All the old demons that have tracked him to here and now to shake him down for what’s left of his tired bones.

Helene sighs and says “Jesus Christ” but she leaves it at that. They talk and cook -- David makes jokes and cranks out handmade pasta noodles. Max teases and prods Michel, starting every story about their days in Paris with “an Italian, a Frenchie, an American, and a Brit walk into a bar with an underage Spaniard.”

Adam stirs the sauce. Studies Helene out of the corner of his eye when she laughs. And the inkling of an idea niggles at the back of his brain and the question just kind of falls out of his mouth. “You have a nice dress?”

The moment he says it, Adam recognizes that this is exactly the wrong thing to be asking his colleague. His female colleague. His female colleague who is  _ Helene _ .

“ _ Excuse me? _ ”

Because Adam just has a knack for putting his foot in his mouth, he looks her in the eye and repeats the question. “Do you have a nice dress?” A little bit shame-faced. “I got to go to this party, and, uh…” He thinks of the invitation -- of Tony standing in his hotel room. Of shouting and things that shouldn’t have been said and how he would have liked to have asked him to come after all. He shrugs. “You're the only girl that I know, so…” 

There is a very long moment in which Helene stares at him, eyebrows climbing toward her hairline and grey eyes wide with wary astonishment. She opens and closes her mouth a few times, trying for words that don’t quite come.

“Uh, yeah,” she agrees at last. There is a faint smudge of a frown between her eyebrows when she turns back to the sauces, like she is not quite happy with this turn of events. “Sure.”

“Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to kill these idiots myself.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which I pillage the script for dialogue and beat canon over the head with a stick.

It is early morning when Tony gathers the waitstaff together in the empty restaurant, passing the menu boards among them. “Have a look,” he insists. “You are all familiar with many of the new menu items by now.”

There are murmurings among the staff members. A few curious looks.

Tony clasps his hands behind his back, standing quietly before them. “Do you know about the Michelin men?”

“It’s a book.”

He can feel Kaitlin at his elbow, trying to suppress the urge to roll her eyes. Yana is a good server, great with the customers. “It is  _ the  _ book, Yana,” she informs the girl. Her polished, London tone is stern. “The Bible.”

Adam -- making his way through the front of house -- stops short when he hears Tony’s voice in the dining room, addressing the waitstaff with firm confidence. “Michelin sends its inspectors to restaurants to eat and award stars. One. Two. Or three.”

“Or none.” And there are the demons talking -- the heavy shadows that cast their doubts across Adam’s mind. He keeps talking, bulldozes his way over Tony who fixes him with a cool, irate look. “No one know who they are. They come, they eat, they go. But they have habits.” Adam Jones has come to win. They will play the Michelin men’s game. “They have to stick to a routine to give every restaurant the same chance.”

Nodding, Tony picks up the thread, the musical rise-and-fall of his voice transcribing the images of their anonymous judges before the solemn audience. “Michelin men eat in pairs. Sometimes the Michelin man can even be a woman. They always book a table before seven-thirty. The first of the pair arrives early and has a drink at the bar; his partner arrives half an hour later.” As he speaks, Adam studies the soft, stubborn edges of his features in profile. The way the cool London sunlight through the window catches stray hairs unwilling to be held in place by carefully slicked pomade, the hazel glow of his wide eyes. “One orders the tasting menu, the other a la carte. Always. They order half a bottle of wine. They ask for tap water. They wear business suits. They’re polite.”

He pauses. Lets this sink in.

“But, attention. They may place a fork on the floor under the table, to see if you notice. And they won’t drop it -- that could make a noise. Make it too easy.” There is a dangerous note of warning in his voice, an undercurrent of steel that has Adam standing straighter, sets the blood running cold in his worn out, wearied veins. “Everything from now on must be perfect. Not good. Not excellent.  _ Perfect _ .”

Adam tastes ashes on his tongue. Tastes methadone. Hears the death knell in the throb of his pulse. “If they find one single thing wrong, they will kill us.”  _ The four horsemen ride and darkness descends. _ “And they will come for us soon.”

He catches Tony after the waitstaff are dismissed, trails him toward the kitchen as Kaitlin makes herself scarce. There is a faint frown that lingers between Tony’s eyebrows, just a smudge of frustration, a tightness around his mouth.

Adam says “I’m taking off early with Helene tonight.”

“Oh?”

“Reece’s restaurant.” He holds the kitchen door ajar, lets Tony slip past. “The relaunch.”

“Yes. Of course. That’s right.” Tony all but stumbles over the words, a flush crawling up from beneath the perfectly pressed collar of his shirt. He darts a glance up at Adam and then away, decides it’s worse to look him in the eye. Thinks,  _ I wish you had asked _ and remembers Adam’s voice sneering the words  _ your big gay crush on me _ and decides it is better this way. “Say hello to him for me, would you?”

“Sure. Yeah.”

Adam watches him head for the office, shoulders pulled tight beneath the fitted lines of his pale grey suit. He catches the hesitation, the pause before Tony turns back to address him over his shoulder. “And Adam?” a pause. “Be kind to Helene. She is good” a good person, a good chef “and we cannot afford to lose our  _ chef de partie _ as a result of a one night stand.”

Bitter as pure vinegar. Adam bites back a dark, sardonic “thanks for that, Tony.”

They do not speak again.

Tony ducks out sometime after the lunch service and does not return.

When the final dinner orders have crossed the pass, Helene disappears with a gym bag and reemerges in an elegant, silver satin dress and a pair of heels that look like they could be used to kill a man. In his navy suit, well-fitted as it is, with the top buttons of his dress shirt undone, Adam feels significantly underdressed beside her.

Helene drives them to the restaurant in her serviceable beige mom mobile and quizzes Adam about Paris while he picks dried Cheerios from the crevice between the console and the seat cushion.

“How could you be so sure?” she asks him as she navigates the car along the busy London streets “when you came back -- how could you be certain Tony would agree to everything? That was, what, the first time you’d seen him in two years?”

“Three.” Adam mumbles, shifting in the passenger seat. “Three years.” He dusts car crumbs of dubious origin off his hands. “I dunno, I just -- he knew he could be doing more with the restaurant. He had bigger aspirations than what it was.” Adam shrugs. “And I knew that if I asked he’d probably say yes.”

Helene wrings the steering wheel in her grip. The words slip out before she can help herself “because he loves you.”

“Because he --” Adam’s echo is faint, his eyes distant. And then he snaps “ _ look _ . I don’t want to talk about, Tony. Okay?”

For all the mulish set to his jaw and the blue sparks of anxiety in his eyes, he surprises her, though, by circling the car when they park, offering her his elbow when she climbs out of the driver’s seat. And as they approach the beaming facade of Reece’s restaurant, join the stream of bodies angling toward the entrance, she feels the tension ratcheting up his spine, tightening his shoulders.

“Did I catch you working on the potato truffle veloute this morning?” she asks.

Adam nods, eager for the distraction even as his eyes rove over the crowd of well-dressed guests. Vaguely familiar faces. The newly refinished interior of the restaurant half-obscured by the ebb and flow of bodies. “I think we should put it on the menu tomorrow, as a sort of modern take on sole bonne femme,” he says. “Michelin loves it when you celebrate French cuisine.” And then, as though struck by the realization, he offers “you look great by the way.”

She beams. “Thank you.”

“Don’t look now,” Adam mutters “but here comes Reece.”

The man he inclines his head to swans through the crowds with a beaming smile, all dark tousled curls just touched by the first hints of grey, stubble and steely blue eyes. Another chef styling himself as a culinary rockstar.  _ I cook good, local ingredients in a unique, creative way to impress my diners _ , Reece had claimed. And for the most part, it is true -- but there is no denying the small, obvious part that aims to emulate Adam without the fire and catastrophe. 

“Hello, Jones.”

“Reece.”

And Reece turns on Helene with his charming smile and his smarm and says “oh, and how nice to meet  _ you _ .” He squeezes her hand, gifts her with a conspiratorial look. “You must be the saucier he’s been trying to hide -- in which case, when you do tire of him, this is what you could be cooking.” And with a wave of his hand he encompasses the banquet table with its artfully arranged spread.

Helene does not so much as twitch an eyebrow.

Adam eyes the display, the milling guests. Hums thoughtfully. “You’re doing me almost as good as me,” is his snide, approving declaration. But he seems distracted, on edge.

_ Chefs _ , Helene thinks.  _ Men. _

From the ebb and flow of bodies a man detaches himself, sliding smoothly into the space at Reece’s elbow. He is tall and lanky, with hair that has started to pass from ginger to grey and a serene, self-satisfied smile.

“This is Marcus,” Reece introduces him warmly. “My partner.”

Adam lifts an eyebrow at the way Marcus’s hand settles on Reece’s elbow. “In business, or…?” The dig of Helene’s nails into his arm is a warning.

And he has a sudden memory, then. Of a seedy bar in Paris, the countertops sticky with spilled drinks, the light heavy and orange and the music thrumming and nervy beneath his skin. Not quite lost to the drinking and the drugs, not quite yet.

Tony, perched on the barstool, spinning his drink idly on the damp coaster. All soft smiles and baby face and flashes of teeth when he laughed at something. And Reece, slouched against the bar beside him, pressing the boundaries of Tony’s personal space, talking nonsense.

“Who says it has to mean anything, Tony?” A friendly hand on a slim thigh. “Haven’t you heard of having fun, blowing off steam?”

“Both,” Reece hums, his tone mild. Aloof. “Not that it should matter to you.”

“A pleasure,” says Marcus, exchanging handshakes. “Monty, the Times is here.”

At a loss, the bitter cyanide taste melting on his tongue, Adam finds himself saying faintly “Tony says…” a cough. “Tony says hi.”

That sets a frost across Reece’s pale grey eyes. His lips thin. “Tony,” he lingers over the name. “If you had any humanity left,” he tells Adam “you’d leave Tony Balerdi well alone. Haven’t you hurt him enough, Adam?” 

At his elbow, Helene sends up a soft noise of protest.

Reece spares her a glance. Full of sympathy. “Best vacate the blast radius now while you can, darling,” he says with the well-worn assurance of a man all-too-familiar with this phenomenon. “It’s always those around him who get destroyed when Adam Jones implodes.”

“What, you want to rake over all my fuck ups again, Reece?” Adam demands. Feels the spark of something old and ugly in his veins -- something hungry. “Trust me, I’ve done it enough myself. There isn’t anything new you can say to me I haven’t already thought of.”

“Well I’ll say it anyway,” Reece snaps. “Fuck you for coming back here, you goddamn junkie. Fuck you for dragging out the  _ Adam Jones Show _ again so that we can all watch as you burn yourself and everyone in the vicinity to ashes all over again. You should have stayed in fucking Missouri --”

“Louisiana,” Adam corrects him hoarsely.

“-- I don’t give a damn -- and never crawled out of that shallow, miserable grave you dug for yourself.” Red in the face and fuming, a thick vein protrudes from his forehead, tracing a line like the Thames. “You’re a goddamn coward.  _ The restaurant? Jean Luc? Tony? Your friends?  _ You don’t have the slightest fucking clue how bad it was in Paris after you self-immolated and did your runner.”

The room shifts on its axis. There are cameras and hushed voices, a shift and crush of bodies on the periphery and too many eyes. 

“And now you’re back.” Reece sneers, his voice gone quiet and brutal. “To set fire to good people’s lives. You’re gonna ruin Tony Balerdi, just because that poor fucker has the decency to love you in spite of yourself -- because he can’t ever say no to you even when it’ll cost him everything.”

“I know,” Adam whispers. Chokes on the sound. “You think I don’t know? I want… I shouldn’t have…” He feels the prickle of sweat break out over his skin, the catch of the cloying air in his lungs. Craves a fix. A drink. A line. A hit.

He turns on his heel and, pushing through the throng of bystanders, disappears.

* * *

The four horsemen are riding. 

Helene finds him beneath the floodlights, perched on a crate of packed and frozen fish with his hands stuffed into his pockets. Itching for a cigarette. His veins twitching with an old, disturbed need.

“Hi.” She has changed -- looks more herself in the ratty sweatshirt and jeans. There is something careful in her expression. “Have you been here all night?”

_ Fuck up. _

Adam grits his teeth. “How’d you find me?”

Helene shrugs. “Sole bonne femme needs sole.” There is a long pause, a comfortable sort of silence while the pair of them watch the loading and unloading of raw fish, the movement of the workers among the crates. “You know, when I met you in Conti’s kitchen I thought you were an absolute prick,” she muses. “An entitled, arrogant American who thought you could waltz your way into anywhere and ransack the world for whatever it was you wanted.”

“You weren’t wrong.”

Ugly feelings stir in Adam’s chest. He had strolled so confidently into the Langham, fresh from his self-imposed exile with a smile and every bit of sharp, cutting charm at his disposal. And he had known what would happen if he asked.

He had waltzed in and ransacked the world and Tony would pay the price. Had always paid. And when he had set foot on the ground in London, Adam Jones hadn’t thought twice about it.

But… 

“No,” Helene agrees. “Not entirely.” She swings her legs against the crate. “Sweeney’s my ex-husband’s name, you know. It was easier to keep the name than change all the paperwork again.”

“Didn’t work out, huh?” Adam wants to shrink into his self-pity. Wants to shrivel and die and hate himself in peace. He doesn’t want to hear about Sweeney-the-ex-husband.

“It might have done.” Helene watches as pounds of fish are offloaded, remembering. “We were really good for a long time. But… you know. We drank too much and partied too much.” Her smile is sad. Fond. “Then… well. I got pregnant with Lily and I wanted to stop. And he didn’t.”

“Didn’t?” Adam asks. The scars of old track marks along his forearms itch with phantom insistence. “Or couldn’t?”

“What’s the difference?”

“Yeah.”  _ Exactly, _ he thinks.  _ What’s the fucking difference? _ And he casts a long, considering look around them. “I worked in places like this when I was a kid, saved up the money to buy a one-way ticket to Paris. Lied my way into Jean Luc’s kitchen. Cooking was all I ever wanted to do, all I ever knew I was good at.” It feels strange to tell her all of this -- like a confession. And at the same time; obfuscation. “Max was there. And Reece. Michel came later, a few months after me. And… Tony. A year later.”

Tony had just appeared. Between one day and the next suddenly there was a new face amidst the rotation of bus boys carting the plastic tubs of dirty plates, scrubbing dishes at the sink. Aside from trying to bum cigarettes or weed, Adam hardly ever interacted with the bus boys -- it was just the four of them. The prodigy chefs. Max, Adam, Reece, Michel.

But somehow.

Somehow, Tony had caught -- like a snag in his brain. A little bit prickly. Intensely serious. It had made Adam want to ruffle him, rile him up, discompose him.

Even now.

Especially now.

“I didn’t speak any French. Working twenty-hour days, six days a week. I was nineteen and I loved every minute of it. The heat. The pressure. The violence. The fucking  _ screaming _ .” Adam laughs, a miserable sound. “The kitchen is the only place I’ve ever felt like I really belonged.”

“Why?” Helene covers his scarred, battered hand with her own. “What happened in Paris?”

“I fucked it all up.” He sniffles. There isn’t any pity in the words, just the cold, naked truth. “Drugs and desperation.” 

Helene hums her understanding.

And Adam’s brain is whirling now. A maelstrom, a vortex of thoughts that spiral one after the other -- guilt and memories and shame and it’s like a prayer. A chant. A recitation called up in the back of his mind in the quiet, dark hours.

“Five o’clock is always the worst time for thinking of things,” he murmurs. Is it really so late now? So early? He picks at a hangnail. Bounces his knee. The list ticks one by one by one in the silence. All his sins. “I always think of things -- a list. Of things, people… it’s like a broken fucking record. My mom. My grandmother. Jean Luc. All the people I’ve let down. Everyone I’ve damaged.”

Helene watches him with quiet, steady eyes. “Am I on your list?”

“Yeah.” He gifts her with a guilty, sideways look. And then, because he owes it to her, he tries to untangle some of the barbed-wire snarls in his thoughts. To explain. “You’re a good chef -- you could probably be better than me. And you’re a good mom. And I worry I’m stifling you, or turning you into me, and you should have more time off to be with Lily…”

“I wouldn’t say no to more time off,” Helene muses mildly. She doesn’t look at him, swinging her heels against the crate. “But fuck you if you think you’re going to turn me into anything I don’t want to be turned into.”

“Okay.” The sound that drags itself out of Adam’s throat sounds more like a chainsaw through wet concrete than it does anything resembling a laugh. “Okay.”

Helene considers an old burn mark on the back of her hand. Risks probing -- just a little bit. “What about Tony?” Her voice is soft. “Is he on your list?”

“Yeah.” The admission escapes him in a sigh like a gust. Adam slides his hands into his hair, sinks down until his elbows rest on his knees. “Yeah, Tony’s there. He’s a prominent fucking feature on the list.”

“Oh?”

“I worry I’m too hard on him. That I’ve taken advantage of him -- how did you put it? I waltz my way in and ransack the world for whatever I want. I mean, I  _ knew  _ that he’d say yes if I asked him. And, I know he had bigger aspirations for the Langham, for himself -- but did I use him?” He digs his fingers into his temples, heartsore and wrung-out. The words spill out of him, admissions of anguish, truths that form from thoughts he’d hardly dared recognized. “I mean, I knew he had a crush on me -- I didn’t know he loved me, though. I never thought… He’s better than that. He  _ deserves  _ better than that.”

Helene, listening with her head bowed and her fringe low across her eyes, is wise enough to say nothing. She will let Adam come by this revelation on his own.

“And then, I don’t know -- then I just start to think about  _ him. _ ” Adam stares at his splayed open hands, helplessly studies the calluses that line his fingers. “How I couldn’t do any of this without him. How much his opinion fucking  _ matters  _ to me. I start working on recipes thinking ‘would Tony like this’?” He shrugs, speaking to something inside himself now, something private and confused. “I do stupid shit to try and make him laugh and I do stupider shit to make him curse, because he always curses in Spanish. I try to do things to make him smile sometimes, because he doesn’t smile enough -- I mean, he smiles, but it’s that bland managerial smile, like the people who do the customer service voice. When he really, genuinely smiles it’s like sunshine. I…” 

She sees it. The moment it washes like dawn across his tired, rough-hewn face -- a revelation that sets him glowing like the sunrise. And in the same moment, shows Helene the whites of his eyes with mounting panic. Horror.

“Oh  _ shiiit _ .” Adam rakes his hands down his face.

Helene pats his back and does her best not to smirk, making sympathetic noises. 

“Oh no, Helene,” he groans into the creases of his palms.

“Oh, yes, Adam,” she sing-songs in reply. It’s so obvious now. So dreadfully, wonderfully apparent. “You love him too.”

He breathes through his nose, swallowing the panic. 

_ I ruin everything I touch. _

“I’m scared to death.” The words come out sandpaper-rough, half-strangled. He can’t do this. “Jesus Christ, Helene. I’m gonna fuck something up between us -- he’s my  _ friend  _ and that’s more than I ever deserve from him. I can’t lose that. I’m scared to death I’ll hurt him.”

“You already have,” Helene reminds him, catching Adam’s wrist in her grip. “More than once. And he keeps coming back.”

What a terrible thought. “Like a kicked dog. Jesus.”

“No.” And here, Helene is firm, her grip on his arm like iron, like steel. Insistent and unbreakable in her faith in Adam and in Tony. “Like someone who sees through your bullshit -- who knows you can and will be better.”


	7. Chapter 7

They are the last ones into the kitchen -- slipping into their white jackets, taking up their positions, as the sun crests well above the horizon. Hazy in the cool, early spring sky. Already, diners are drifting through the Langham’s doors, guided by the dark-uniformed waitstaff, conducted through the ballet by Kaitlin’s experienced hand. 

The first wave of orders is delivered to the kitchen -- tables and numbers and special requests for ingredients breaking over the pass like high tide. 

Adam’s nerves sing. His veins humming bright and electric with life, with these new revelations.  _ Tony. Tony. Tony. _ They need to talk. There are so many things to say.

His head spins and spins. The plates go whirling across the pass -- he hardly notices what they look like, running on automatic. 

_ What is this? What does this mean now? _

Tony is nowhere to be found.

“He called this morning,” Kaitlin tells Adam in the spare minutes when she passes him the orders for tables seven and three. “He’ll be in for evening service but he said he wasn’t feeling well.” 

And there is something about that that makes Adam sting, something that bites at the insides of his veins -- anxious and uneasy.  _ Where is Tony? _ He  _ needs  _ to be here. Now. Adam needs to lay eyes on him, needs to see him clearly in the late morning sunshine to know for sure -- is he going mad, or did he mean it? Sad eyes and a soft face and a sharp-edged exterior. Does he love Tony Balerdi?

The orders keep coming.

Michel does not cook the salmon evenly.

David burns a dish.

Max fucks up the sauce.

It isn’t so bad, all things considered -- they recover from worse all the time -- but to Adam each mistake is a catastrophe, a new blow compounded on top of this fresh ache. The raw question mark that rises up beneath his skin, squeezing in the tributaries of his veins.  _ You’ll ruin everything. You’ll hurt him. You don’t deserve him. _

“Get your shit together,” Helene demands of him when she passes the salmon and garlic scallops for final inspection. There is no room for argument in her tone.

At half-past five, Tony slips through the back door -- head down, eyes fixed. Quick and silent  along the periphery so that Adam almost doesn’t notice him.

Almost.

“Hey, Tony -- wh…” Anything Adam might say -- any words that had formed on his lips -- are killed swiftly, instantly, at the sight of him.

“ _ Shit. _ ” Tony winces. “I was hoping you wouldn’t…” 

He makes the mistake of looking up.

His bottom lip has been split, swollen and bisected by a thick scab of crusted blood. And the right side of his face, his sweet, dear face -- stark and naked in the bright kitchen lights -- is a motley of bruising. Blues and purples and a neat dark ring of burst blood vessels curving beneath his tired eye.

_ You did this.  _ Adam’s blood turns to antifreeze. “Tony.” The demons in his head -- under his skin -- scream when he lifts a hand toward the bruises. Tony, always so careful in his composure, so fastitidous; he looks bedraggled. Battered.  _ You’ll hurt him -- you hurt him. This is your fault. Oh, Tony, what did you _ do? “What happened?”

There is no disguising the way he flinches from the ghost of Adam’s touch. His lips tremble. “I’m fine.”

“Like hell you are.”

“Adam --” Tony’s voice cracks. Threatens to break entirely. He pushes past Adam, hedges his way toward the office. “I need to get ready -- we have dinner service…”

There is a fist around Adam’s heart. A vise-grip of steel and iron that tightens, crushes the muscle into bloody, agonized pulp.  _ Tony. Tony. Tony. _ “Dinner service? Are you fucking --?” He grasps helplessly for the words, the wound behind his breastbone throbbing with every slam of his pulse. “Pass,” he grinds out. “Someone. Pass.  _ Tony! _ ”

But Tony is already gone, pushing past him into the office.

“Will you just --” Adam chases him down. Corners Tony in the quiet back office away from prying eyes. He takes the moment to close the door, gathering his control, all his panicked, fly-away thoughts, before he turns back to Tony. Softens his voice. “Talk to me?”

Sore-looking, miserable, Tony eases himself into the desk chair, searching through the drawers. He spares a glance at Adam, coming up with a small kit bag from the bottom drawer, as he says numbly “your debt to Bonesis is cleared.”

It feels like walking face-first into a wall. Adam blinks, uncomprehending. “What?”

“I said --”

“No. No, I heard what you said.” There is something that quavers around the edges of Adam’s voice, something breathless and disbelieving. He watches as Tony unpacks the little kit bag of cosmetics, sponges and powder and concealer. “Tony, tell me you didn’t.”

Tony does not look at him. “Somebody had to.”

Adam stands, rooted to the floor in the middle of the office, completely helpless. He wants to scream. Wants to rail at Tony for being so stupid, for intervening where he never should have stuck his nose in, wants to…

He doesn’t know what he wants.

“They would have killed you for it eventually, Adam.” Tony keeps his voice carefully neutral, blotting foundation over the stain of bruising, wincing when he presses to firmly on the swollen, tender spot beneath his eye.

Adam rakes his fingers through his hair, digs blunt nails into his scalp.  _ You shouldn’t have done this. My fault. My fault. _ “No, Tony, they wouldn’t have. They  _ say  _ that -- but they wouldn’t…” He is grasping at straws, he knows it. They both know it. But it was such a stupid thing to do, Tony never should have interfered… 

“Oh?” Tony makes a disparaging sound at the back of his throat, dusting powder across his cheekbone. The bruising almost disappears -- an ugly, miserable sort of magic trick. “They seemed pretty serious about it when Bonesis’ toughs held a knife to my throat while they counted the money.”

Adam sees black. Then scarlet. Blood and fury gathering in the weight of his clenched and shaking fists. “They did  _ what _ ?!”

Embarassed, Tony’s reflection cringes in the little hand-held mirror. “It doesn’t matter,” he murmurs. “It’s done now. I’ve erased your debt.”

And the floor comes rising up to meet Adam. The rug pulled out from underneath him. A slap across the face. “What do you mean?” he demands. “You didn’t have any right.”

“It needed to be dealt with, Adam.”

_ “But not by you!” _ It explodes out of Adam. Furious. Frightened.  _ It wasn’t any of your business, _ he thinks.  _ Don’t fucking enable me. Don’t let me keep doing this to you. _ And  _ Tony, shit, were you crazy? They hurt you. They could’ve killed you. I couldn’t live with that. Oh God. _ “I told you to stay out of it, Tony -- I didn’t want you paying off my debts.”

“Adam--”

“That’s not your job.” As quickly as the rage had come, it vanishes. Leaves Adam shaken and bereft and distraught. The cut glass glint of his eyes softens, shines with anguish.“That’s not -- you shouldn’t have to pick up the pieces and fix it all every time I fuck up, okay? I gotta handle my own shit.”

_ “Adam.” _

He paces the length of the office, back and forth, everything gnarled and knotted up inside of him. “Why do you do this? Huh?” Adam whirls on Tony, still seated and growing red in the face at his desk. “Why do you let me use you and walk all over you and take advantage of you, huh? I know you, Tony. I  _ know  _ you -- you aren’t spineless. Why keep doing this?” His voice breaks. “Why not just give up on me? Wouldn’t it be easier?”  

_ “Maldito idiota.” _

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” Tony levers himself out of his seat, moving stiffly, his scowl fierce. The words that fall between them are sharp and furious, snapping with indignation when they hit the air.“I am not letting you  _ take advantage of me. _ Never once. You think because you have a pretty face and because I have this… this stupid, unrequited love that I let you walk all over me?” In spite of the dull throb of pain, he raises his eyebrows, eyes wide with amazement. “It is incredible you cook so well with your head shoved so far up your ass, Adam.”

Thunderstruck, Adam gapes at him. Frozen. Struck dumb.

“Do you ever look at your pay stubs?” The brown eyes, giving off sparks, search his face. “No? I didn’t think so.” Tony elaborates. “You live here, you eat here, you do not pay for a car or gas -- for the past six months I have been taking half your paycheck. This has made a good dent in the money you owed to Bonesis.”

There is a slow, gut-churning moment as Adam processes this. The clock on the wall ticks too loudly in his ears. The math stacks up in his brain. “And the rest?”

“Fronted from the Langham’s profits,” Tony supplies instantly, cool and clearly pleased with himself. “I have paperwork for you to sign. The arrangement will continue -- taking a monthly cut from your salary until the funds are repaid.” 

“But… how? Why?”

Tony shrugs, evasive. “ _ Adam Jones at the Langham _ does not operate without Adam Jones.” And then, seeing the war of confusion and frustration on Adam’s worn face, he softens. Tells him gently “you do not owe me anything, Adam.”

It’s strange. The tightness that rises in Adam’s throat feels like crying and the warmth expanding in his chest feels like laughter and it all feels like an unbearable desperation. A brokenness. A need. There is only the giddiness of relief and the heartache of  _ I’m sorry _ and the guilt and the head-spinning, incomprehensible wonder of  _ Tony. Tony. Tony. _

_ I don’t deserve this. _

_ Little Tony. _

“How bad is it?” Adam’s voice is soft. “It’s not just your face, is it, Tony?”

Suddenly, the distance between them is nothing. Tony looks exhausted, watching Adam through his eyelashes as he reaches for the knot of his tie. He doesn’t speak -- in quick, graceless motions the tails of his shirt are untucked, the buttons undone one-by-one. There is nothing artful about the way he strips himself bare to show Adam the bruises littered in blue and purple across his torso. He is soft. Vulnerable. And it breaks Adam’s heart.

“It is not so bad,” Tony whispers. He has the saddest, most accepting face Adam has ever seen -- is this is what he will do for love of Adam Jones? Adam knows he does not deserve it. That Tony certainly doesn’t deserve it.

“Oh, Tony.” It sighs out of him -- all of the sadness and the fondness and the strange revelations of the past twenty-four hours.  _ I’m sorry. I think I might be in love with you. _ And the warm, roughened flat of his palm finds its way to a place free of bruising, all velvet-smooth skin and the soft curve of stomach -- and he feels the way Tony flinches. The full-bodied twitch when his hand finds bare skin. “Tony. Tony.” Adam murmurs into the closeness, brings his thumb up to trace the scab along Tony’s bottom lip. “What did I do to you?”

Tony’s breath trembles, humid against his knuckles.

“Tony?” Kaitlin, her knuckles rapping sharp against the door. “Tony!”

For a moment, just a moment, Tony imagines the weight of Adam’s head presses against his temple. Commiserating. Mourning the almost of the moment. Almost what? 

“What?!” Adam hollers.

The door swings open. “There’s a man --” 

Kaitlin stutters to a stop, and Tony realizes he is still wrapped up in Adam Jones. Is standing with his shirt unbuttoned and bruises all across his skin and Adam far too close not to lead to suggestions. 

“There’s a man at the bar.” 

Kaitlin recovers her composure quickly. More quickly than Tony who stumbles away from Adam, hands flying to his unbuttoned shirt, trying to hide the flush that burns across his skin. 

“He’s wearing a suit. His friend arrived half an hour later. Left their drinks at the bar, ordered half a bottle of wine and two glasses of tap water.” Kaitlin’s dark eyes shift from Tony to Adam and back again, her heart-shaped face tight with unease. And then she delivers the final blow. “And there is now a  _ fork  _ on the floor under their table.”

“Michelin.” Tony feels a pang of nausea in the hollow of his chest.

_ Shit. _

Adam is already in motion, snapped back into sharp focus. “Max! Get my knives?” He is a juggernaut of purpose, storming through the kitchen, tightening the strings of the apron around his waist. “Where is it? Where’s the order?” 

The kitchen erupts into chaos.

“Shit,” Tony says, full of feeling, buttoning up his shirt. “Fuck. Have they been seated?” He crams his shirttails into the waistband of his trousers, the panic bright in his eyes when he looks to Kaitlin in the doorway. “Do we know what table they’re at?”

She gives him a once-over with dark, worried eyes, lips pursed. “I’ll handle it.”

“Where’s the order?!”

Helene plucks it from the pass, reading it off cool and clear. “One taster, one a la carte.”

Scrubbing his hands together, Adam nods. Surveys the tight, anxious faces of his team. “Okay.” A deep breath. He risks a glance at Tony -- Tony who holds himself so carefully, hiding bruises. Who watches Adam with steady eyes soft and clear as caramelized sugar. _ Such faith.  _ Adam fortifies himself, rolls his shoulders, and starts doling out commands. “Michel, you’re on the short ribs for the beef and the sauce for the sea bass. I’ll portion out the fish and the beef -- Max,  _ my knives _ .”

“Yes, chef.” The affirmative echoes in their gleaming kitchen.

“I wanna see every element.”

“Yes, chef.” It sings in his bones.

“Every garnish.”

“They’re not just watching their own table, they’ve got eyes on everything -- it’s all got to be perfect. Do you hear me?” This time he doesn’t look at Tony. Doesn’t dare. There is work to do. “Kaitlin you have service covered for front of house?”

She frowns. “Yes, chef.” The silent question at the end is obvious.

“Tony.” Adam still doesn’t look, hates to see the hurt he will find there. “There’s no hiding that shiner of yours -- you’re off service tonight. Hang back here.”

Perfection.

“Adam,” Tony splutters “you can’t --”

“He’s right, Tony,” Kaitlin agrees softly, reaching out to squeeze his arm. “You look rough, even with the worst of it covered up.”

“Fine.” Tony capitulates with ill grace, sends Kaitlin off with a kiss on the cheek and a single, parting threat. “Keep me informed, or I will kill you.”

Kaitlin tosses her hair over her shoulder and proclaims “I’d like to see you try.”

Adam kicks one of the stools his way, trusts Tony to set himself up where he won’t be in anyone’s way, and says “you’re my lucky charm tonight, Tones.” And then he sinks into the chaos -- the perfectly orchestrated madness -- of cooking, and nothing else matters.

Tony hitches himself up onto the wobbling stool, watches it all unfold. It is incredible. The people who call Adam Jones the ‘Rock Star Chef’ are fools, he thinks. Adam is so much better than that. He is an artist. A conductor. A commander of armies.

They work as extensions of one another -- Adam at the head of it all, Helene and Michel and Max and David his multitude of hands and eyes. A beautiful machination. Perfection.

The plates go out.

It is only because Tony knows Kaitlin so well that he sees through her unruffled exterior, catches the anxiety riding in the short glance she shares with him. “Plates are clean,” she declares. “Starters are finished.”

“Okay.” The furrows in Adam’s brow are deep, his eyes shining. This is it. “Mains to the pass,” he bellows “right now!”

Their lives are on the line.

Tony has long since given up on God -- but if ever there was a time for praying. “ _ Dios te salve, Maria. Llena erea de gracia: El Seńor es contigo. _ ”

“You’re gonna wait right here,” Adam tells Kaitlin, burning with intensity. “You’re gonna make sure everything goes out to them. Okay?” And then Helene is sliding the plates onto the pass and David is at his elbow with the side and Adam demands “give me some room. Give me some room.”

He is hunched and twisted up over the pass, inspecting. 

Plate it just so. Garnish. 

Tony whispers “ _ bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres. Y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre: Jesús. _ ”

Michel passes over the sauce, perfect in the serving dish.

“Is it okay?” 

“It’s perfect,” Michel insists. “Exactly how you like it.”

“You’re absolutely sure?”

Do they hear the rising mania in Adam’s voice? The panic? Tony gives up on praying, levers himself off the stool.

“I checked it myself.” Michel is unfazed. “It’s great.”

“Come on, Adam,” Tony murmurs. He wants to reach across the pass, to take Adam’s hand and squeeze -- to reassure him and protect him from his demons, his gnawing fear of failure. “Let them go.”

Helene’s hand on Adam’s shoulder. “It’s perfect,” she insists. “Come on.”

Adam calls it.

_ “Service.” _

Kaitlin moves with military smartness. 

“Fingerprints off, yeah?”

“Yes, chef,” she assures him.

“Keep it level.”

“Yes, chef.”

Tony risks letting his hand creep across the chill stone of the countertop, finds Adam’s rough, knobby fingers with his own and squeezes once.  _ Let it go. Trust us. _

“Exactly how I gave it to you, Kaitlin.”

_ “Yes, _ chef!” And then she disappears through the double doors and they are left to hold their breath. To wait.

Adam’s hand is clammy. His grip makes the bones in Tony’s fingers creak. And there are other orders to fill, there is so much more work to do -- but for this moment, in this minute, no one can bring themselves to move.

Maybe a second. Maybe a minute. Maybe an hour.

“They sent it back!” Kaitlin comes flying into the kitchen, furious and frightened and anguished. The dishes, picked apart and barely eaten, go skittering across the countertop. “They said it’s too spicy.”

“What?” Adam sways on his feet. His pale, crystalline eyes have gone frighteningly, chillingly vacant. 

_ The horsement are riding. _

_ Apocalypse. _

His pulse beats in his ears. A death knell.

“Too fucking spicy!” Kaitlin stabs a hand at the dish, distraught and incensed all at once. “What the fuck have you done?”

“I don’t…” Adam chokes on the words, twists around to scan the faces of the white-smocked chefs. Seeking answers.

Tony spots it first. The way Michel shifts. The cold satisfaction in his dark eyes. 

_ No, no, no. This can’t be how it happens. _

“Pepper,” Michel proclaims, swiping his finger along the rim of the serving bowl. “I added cayenne to it. For Paris.”

“Michel.”

No.

“Adam.”

Oh fuck.

“Adam!  _ Adam!” _

Helene is shouting. Adam is -- the world is reeling. Crumbling. 

“It’s all right,” Tony tries to say. Nothing is all right. None of this will ever be all right. The words taste bitter, ring hollow. “It’s all right, we’ll…”

“Fuck.” Adam is shaking in his grip, white-faced and sweating and looking ready to vomit. “Let go. Let me go, Tony -- for fuck’s sake!”

“Watch that pan, David,” Max’s voice sounds a million miles away. “There are still other orders.”

Helene says “we aren’t done yet.”

“We might as well be.”

“Adam,  _ please.” _

But Adam is gone. Tearing off his apron. Stumbling out the back door into the darkness.

_ No, _ Tony reels.  _ No, no, no -- it isn’t  _ fair.

“Tony.” Michel is still standing in the kitchen. Adam is gone and Michel is here, a stone-faced usurper. Nonchalant. As if he has not just cost them  _ everything. _ “I am sorry to have thrown you into the fire. There is always collateral damage where Adam Jones is involved. But,” he shrugs his shoulders. They are all damned. “He deserved it.”

Tony explodes.

“Collateral damage?!” Oh, Tony _burns._ All the unshed tears and the anger and the helplessness boil over in his blood, seizes in his chest. He snaps off each word between his teeth, suddenly dangerous. _Vicious._ _“Pedazo de mierda,_ I don’t care if you think he deserved it -- this is _my_ restaurant. My people. And you do not _fuck_ with them for the sake of your fucking petty, dick-measuring, spiteful kitchen revenge campaign!”

He has been angry before. They have all seen him shout at staff, have been on the receiving end of a litany of rapid-fire Spanish abuse, but this? Red-faced, eyes flashing. Screaming with a fury he didn’t even know existed within himself. Fists curled and feet planted and he is ready to hurt. To maim.

“Get out!” He is sure front-of-house can hear him. He is making a spectacle of himself, and he doesn’t care -- there is too much righteous fury in him, too much devastation.  _ “Get out!” _

“Tony!” Kaitlin’s voice quavers. 

Michel makes a move to go, but he is not gone fast enough. Tony wants him out of his sight now. This instant. Wants the whole ordeal over and done and scrubbed from his memory. He wants to scream. Wants to fall to his knees and break down and sob over the ruins of their miracle.  _ “Traidor! Inútil maldito bastardo, podría matarte yo mismo!” _ And he snatches up the nearest thing, blind and raging -- the fucking serving bowl.

He nearly clobbers Max. The bowl shatters mere inches from Michel’s head.

_ “Jesus Christ!” _ Helene is too shrill.  _ “Fuck. _ Tony!”

Michel takes the hint. 

Tony thinks it’s a fucking shame he missed.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Fuck, what do we do now?”


	8. Chapter 8

Somehow -- somehow, they survive the night. Kaitlin cancels every booking that has not already arrived with her sincerest apologies. Helene and Max and David manage to bully their way through the last of the dinner orders. 

“I know you won’t go home,” Kaitlin tells Tony, hollow-eyed and exhausted as she waits for Helene to finish plating the order for Table three. “But go sit down at least. Just…” There is too much sympathy in her face, too much kindness. It hurts. “We’re on damage control for now. Take five minutes, Tony.”

He loves her for it.

“We’re not dead yet, boss,” Max assures him, flipping vegetables in the skillet. A funny thing, him calling Tony  _ boss. _ “Still kickin’ for now.”

It’s ugly and bloody. But they manage.

Tony locks himself in the office and dials Adam’s cell phone. It rings through to voicemail -- he hangs up before the dial tone.

His hands shake. The bruises on his face and belly and shoulders throb, sore and weary and heartbroken. _ Please. Please. Please. _ Tony strips off his suit coat, pacing from one end of the office to the other. Fourteen steps. About-face. Another fourteen steps.

_ “At the tone, please leave your message.” _

“Adam.” The name catches in his throat. “Adam, pick up.”

What are they going to do?

Unwittingly, his mind conjures up the murky arrondissements of Paris. The cobblestone walks and the seedy flats, the meltdowns in Jean Luc’s kitchens, the dive bars and back alleys. Booze and drugs and sex and Adam always at the middle of the catastrophe. Always on the edge of a breakdown. The dreadful, nerve-rattling night Tony had sat with him on the cold bathroom tile, made him vomit until there was nothing left, had coaxed glass after glass of water into him because Adam had  _ begged  _ him not to call the paramedics. Didn’t want to go to the ED.

He’d had nightmares. Finding Adam dead -- drug overdose, alcohol poisoning -- cold and grey and lifeless in a pool of his own vomit.

“Christ, Adam,” Tony pleads with the phone cradled against his ear. “Please don’t do anything stupid.”

The next three calls go straight to voicemail and Tony feels like he can’t breathe.

This isn’t how it should end.

He sinks onto the narrow couch, drops his head into his hands.

“Tony?” Helene wavers in the doorway. She looks wrecked, her face wan, the hair falling in loose wisps from her topknot. “Everyone else has gone. You all right?”

He searches for an answer --  _ absolutely fucking not _ doesn’t seem appropriate, even if it’s the truth. But he can’t bring himself to lie, she isn’t stupid. “No?” It doesn’t seem possible to explain all of the knots he is twisted into, the anxiety that eats like acid through his stomach. The visceral, physical pain of it. “I don’t know -- it’s…”

“A clusterfuck.”

Tony snorts. “Yeah. That.” 

“Any word…?” Helene lets the question trail off. They both know what she means.

“No, only his voicemail.” Tony swallows hard, jittering the phone in his hand -- wishing for something. Any sign. There is a dangerous quaver to his voice. “For two years, when he left Paris, I thought he was  _ dead.” _

She is across the room in her ripped jeans and beat-up combat boots to crouch beside him, all serious eyes and gentle hands. “This isn’t Paris,” she says. And for all that the ghosts are still there, for all that the wounds still linger, she is  _ right. _ “Look, Adam told me some of it. And I know I wasn’t there for the drugs and the booze and the going batshit crazy -- but he’s trying, Tony. He’s been good. And…” She hesitates. There are some things that are not hers to confess. “There’s so much for him. Even -- even if Michelin try and obliterate us. You really think he’ll give up on that so easily?”

“I don’t… I don’t know. Helene, I truly don’t know.” Tony shakes. Nauseous, wracked with guilt and fear and heartache. “I don’t know how to help him. I tried…”

“Oh, Tony.” Helene cups his face in her small, scarred chef’s hands. “You aren’t responsible for him.” And she plants a kiss of benediction on his forehead. “Go home, get some sleep -- Christ knows you need it.” She brushes the stray hairs from his brow, and Tony is surprised to be the one mothered for once instead of the one doing the mothering. “You okay if I head out?”

“Of course,” he breathes. “Of course. You’ve been here long enough, Helene. Go see your daughter. I…” Tony has to catch himself, has to swallow down the words before they turn themselves into sobs.

“If I hear anything, I’ll call you.”

“Thank you.”

The fluorescent lights against the frosted glass of the office wall go dark. It is just Tony now, the way it always is. Just Tony and his thoughts and his fears and the cell phone clutched in his sweaty, shaking hand.  _ Please, Adam, please don’t do this. _

He hits redial.

“A… A- _ dam?” _ The sound of his name shatters.

Tony hangs up.

He is not going to cry. 

But already, his lips taste like salt and his cheeks are damp. He has to remind himself to breathe, to fight the rise of panic in his chest, to close his eyes and measure out the seconds -- he cannot afford a panic attack. Not now.

_ “At the tone, please leave your message.” _

Seven seconds of silence.

Tony drags his hands through his hair, scrubs at his cheeks. Listens to the automated message again with the tight, asthmatic feeling in his chest. “Look,” he musters every ounce of conviction he has. Every bit of promise. “We can still fix this. _ I  _ will fix this” he will find a way. “But, I swear to you Adam, I will kill you myself if you do something stupid.”

There is no hiding the way his voice quavers.

It’s all gone so wrong. So fast.

“Adam,” Tony says his name like a prayer against his palms. “Adam  _ please.” _

He chokes on the sobs that block his throat, the tears that well up and burn hot and frightened and ashamed, heavy on his eyelashes.

Three more voicemails -- the words barely intelligible. Garbled by sobs, muffled against his fist. And he is unraveling, unspooling -- a wreck of shivering, sick anxiety. Devastated.

They are ruined.

This will kill them. Michel has dealt the death blow. Tony doesn’t know how they can recover from this -- how he can salvage anything from the wreckage -- and Adam is  _ gone _ .

Tony had hoped.

Had had so much faith…

He barely manages to lurch across the office fast enough, emptying the meager contents of his stomach into the wastebasket. Mostly bile. Then spit. Then nothing. He shakes, dry heaving, scrubbing the back of his hand across his mouth.

Whatever happens -- he can’t do this. Not now. There are too many people relying on him to  _ manage things _ .

He tries one last time.

“I know it doesn’t matter what I say to you, Adam, but please.” Don’t throw this away so easily. Come back Don’t do this. “Please. I love you. I --” What has he done? What did he just  _ say _ ? “ _ Mierda _ .” Shit. Shit. Shit. “I can’t delete....”

Stupid, hopeless fucker.

He has to fix this.

It is almost four am -- he has wasted enough time falling apart. That means five o’clock in France. Hardly a decent hour. Still. He forces himself to sit behind the computer, straightening his tie as he searches up the number for the Michelin corporate office.

He leaves messages. Requests callbacks.

Hollowed out, numb and buzzing with a haze of adrenaline -- of last-ditch desperation -- Tony tries to orchestrate their salvation. His shoulders straighten, his spine is stiff. He drinks three cups of coffee, considers the numbers -- how many of their employees might leave, how many might stay. Can they recoup the loss of one star? Two?

He keeps an eye on his cell phone, praying it will ring. Debates calling around to every Emergency Department in the city to see if Adam Jones has washed up in their clinic -- drunk, stoned, comatose, half-dead.

The Michelin representative delivers the news and Tony sways on his feet -- garbles out broken French and immediately rakes through their bookings in search of the men who sent back a sabotaged meal only a few hours ago.

He has been given a miracle.

It will be okay.

Kaitlin is asleep when he calls, her voice soft and muzzy. “ _ Thank God _ ,” she whispers. “ _ Oh, Tony, thank God -- it’s all going to be all right. Have you called _ \--?”

“Not yet.”

“ _ Call them. Call him _ , she insists. “ _ Oh Christ _ .”

Helene answers on the first ring.

“ _ Anything _ ?”

“Not from Adam.” Tony explains.

She swears. Long and breathless and full of feeling. “ _ Thank fuck _ .”

It takes a while to reassure David that everything will be fine. The catastrophe has been averted -- for the most part.

“ _ What about _ \--?”

Michel. The fucking traitor.

“He will he dealt with.”

Max makes it clear that  _ he _ is prepared to be the one to deal with Michel, such as it is.

“No.” Tony drops his head into his free hand, feels put through the wringer. “Believe me, I would like nothing more -- but you do anything stupid and then I am down another chef and you are back in prison.”

They agree, this is an outcome that benefits no one. Somehow, Tony thinks it still may not be quite enough to keep Max from taking a knife to their former  _ sous _ chef.

There is only one more call to make.

He holds his breath. Paces. Fourteen steps, from one end of the room to the other.

This time, the phone rings.

“ _ Hullo, Tony _ .” Drawling. British.

His heart sinks. And then -- “Reece?”

“ _I_ _have your fucking idiot sleeping off his latest spectacular crash and burn in my office_.” 

And he is sure Reece says something else, but Tony cannot hear -- cannot understand a thing except that Adam is alive. He is all right. He is not dead in a gutter somewhere, has not lost himself down a death-spiral of substance abuse and old sins revisited.

The cry that bursts out of him is too sharp, too wracked with heartache and relief -- it knocks him to the floor, his legs turned to pudding, unwilling to support him any longer.

“ _ Tony _ ?” Reece’s voice on the line, barking questions. “ _ Tony, Jesus Christ. What’s going on over there? ‘Tonio _ ?”

Tony sobs -- didn’t think he had so many tears left in him to cry, not for Adam Jones -- fist pressed against his trembling lips. “Is he…?” He is afraid to ask. The questions catch at the back of his throat. “He isn’t…?”

“ _ He was out of his mind last night,  but he was stone-cold sober _ .” Reece’s voice is hard. “ _ What happened, Tony _ ?”

It’s too much to explain, too much to even try and formulate an answer. Tony rakes a hand through his hair. “I’ll come and get him. Thank you, Reece.”

* * *

Reece’s jaw is grimy with stubble, the circles dark beneath his eyes, when he finds Tony at the back door of the restaurant.

“Well,” he says, looking Tony up and down. “You look like shit.”

Tony has spent almost twenty-four hours in the same suit; the charcoal grey tweed is badly rumpled, pale pink button down crushed and creased. His tie disappeared somewhere around two in the morning. The concealer has been scrubbed away by tears and exhaustion, leaving the bruises on his cheek and beneath his eye a sickly purple in the wan light.

“Reece,” he sighs “ _ please. _ ” 

“You poor fucker.” Reece reaches for him, drawing Tony into the doorway with a fond, mournful  look. “Come and eat something.”

Adam is seated at the polished white counter, nursing a glass of orange juice. He is whole. He looks miserable and exhausted and wrung out -- but there is no trace of the strung-out addict, none of the shaking, the muzzy-headedness, the trainwreck aftermath. 

Tony’s heart stutters sharply, painfully in his chest at the sight of him. “ _ Adam _ .”

Adam does not look him in the eye. “You shouldn’t have come here, Tony.” Shame burns deep in his blood -- the desire for a hit of something, a line, a drink. To give up fighting and fall back on his old sins. Let everyone see what a catastrophe he is, no matter how hard he tries to hide it. “You shouldn’t -- I’ve ruined  _ everything. _ It’s all my fucking fault. I…”

“Don’t.” There is not an ounce of strength left in Tony’s bones. “Adam, please -- just don’t. Come back to the Langham.” His voice is soft. Fragile.

“What?!  _ No _ \-- Tony. You don’t -- don’t you  _ understand? _ I fucking destroy everything I touch.” Adam slams down the glass of orange juice. The empty plate and fork rattle on the counter. “I’ve ruined us. I’m a fucking poison,  _ don’t you get it?” _ And his face is so raw, his electric eyes so overbright with pain. His knobby, scarred fingers shake and jitter on the smooth surface of the counter top, white-knuckled. “Every time I try and fix things I can’t shake all my goddamn fuckups and you’re the one who’s paying the price and you don’t deserve that. You never deserved it.”

And Tony -- Tony is done. 

“Shut up.” He has not slept, is running entirely on adrenaline and a fragile glimmer of hope, and he does not want to hear about Adam Jones the Tragedy. Doesn’t want to hear what he does or does not deserve from this man. “Adam, _ shut up.”  _ He is trembling -- furious -- has to cling to the edge of the counter, dig his fingers into the cold stone, to hold himself upright. “You stupid… you fuck -- I don’t want to hear it.”

Adam freezes. Gapes at Tony like he’s been slapped across the face.

Watching the spectacle play out, Reece folds his arms -- keeps himself carefully out of the way, but close enough to intervene. God forbid.

“It isn’t over,” Tony insists. “Not by a long shot.” He is twitchy with exhaustion, nervy and bright and exhilarated. Giddy with relief. “I called the Michelin office in Paris to explain what Michel had done to your dish. They said they had no inspectors in London last night.”

They have been granted a reprieve. A stay of execution.

Impossible.  
“So... I called the number the men used to book the table. They're _software salesmen_ from _Birmingham_...” Adam watches him speak, hardly comprehends a word. All he is aware of is _Tony_ \-- a little bit hysterical, a little bit wrecked. Rumpled and fraying around the edges, with the sunshine caught in the soft fall of his hair loose across his forehead. 

How much of a toll has this taken? How much has Tony fought -- dragged them through hell and high water and found them a miracle, delivered Adam salvation  _ again? _

“Hey.” Tony blinks at him, a little puzzled, a little wary. Adam is staring. “Come on -- laugh or something. It will all be okay.”

Adam cannot laugh. Can’t think. Can’t speak. He is too wrapped up  _ in it will all be okay, _ in the golden shine of Tony’s soft brown eyes, in  _ Tony Tony Tony _ \-- who means the world to him.

Somewhere, Reece is saying “Jones. Jones, are you all right?” And Adam is distantly aware of his own body, of lurching to his feet. And everything is  _ Tony;  _ wide-eyed, stuttering to a stop -- alarmed and unable to stammer out a single word -- with his pert, perfect face caught in Adam’s hands. 

Adam kisses him.

It’s a graceless, desperate crush of lips, Tony stiff with shock and locked up tight -- his lips pursed hard and frightened against Adam’s mouth.  _ Thank you, _ he thinks. And,  _ I love you _ , pressed quick and hard against an uncertain mouth. He tastes blood. Feels Tony wince -- the bruises, the split lip.

When Adam lets him go, stroking the pads of his thumbs along Tony’s cheeks, it might just be the end of him. Tony feels sick. Like his heart might break. And he is too sharply aware of the frightening blue eyes that watch his mouth as he tongues away the blood where his scabbed over lip has split again.  _ It was shock,  _ he tells himself.  _ It doesn’t mean anything -- it _ can’t  _ mean anything.  _ His voice wavers dangerously when he fumbles, reaching into the pocket of his greatcoat to find the beaten leather knife roll.

“It’s -- they’re Jean Luc’s knives.,” he explains, offering them to Adam. “His daughter -- she sent them to me, not long after the reopening.” Adam takes them from him slowly, looks half in a trance. This last ghost from his past -- this one is not so unwelcome. “I… well.” Tony swallows hard. Embarrassed. “I suppose I was waiting for the right moment.” He watches as Adam unwraps the roll of blades, studies each of the well-worn handles.  _ Please. _ “Will you come back to the Langham?”

“I’m afraid, Tones.” He has never heard Adam sound so tired, so small -- not even in the darkest days in Paris. The bravado is stripped away. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

Tony is not going to coddle him, will not lie. “You can’t,” he says “not alone.” And he tilts his head, forces Adam to catch his eye -- earnest and burning and so full of faith. “But you have Max and David and Helene…”

There is something terribly soft in Adam’s expression, a tenderness that Tony has never seen before in the way he smiles. “And you?”

“And me.” Tony does not hesitate. Has to fight the blush that threatens to spill over his cheeks under the weight of Adam’s stare.

He will always have Tony.

“Okay.” 

And that should be the end of it. They are all right, they have their salvation -- Adam will come back to the Langham. But Adam… he sets the knife roll aside, the leather smacking lightly against the counter top. And that terrible, tender expression has not left his eyes. 

Tony looks in askance at Reece. Glances at the door. At the early white sunshine streaming through the high windows. Anywhere but at Adam. It isn’t fair. He can’t bear it -- can’t hold out the hope, can’t imagine…

Adam’s hand is warm, scarred and calloused, cupping the curve of his jaw. Tony doesn’t have anything left in him to fight. He wants to weep. And his face is turned ever-so-gently, drawn back around and he  _ can’t. _ He just  _ can’t  _ look at Adam who slips a finger beneath his chin. Tilts his head up.

This time, Adam kisses a question. A soft, gentle askance -- all slow stubble-rasp and warmth -- and Tony feels the whole world shatter.  _ Yes.  _ Adam asks, and Tony says yes -- always says yes -- and it feels like fireworks. Like the barbed wire knots deep in Adam’s core have loosened, have finally started to un-knot themselves. Like the whole world has fallen out from underneath Tony’s feet and he might just die, might just fly apart if Adam doesn’t keep holding him together, holding on to him.

He is dizzy and breathless -- the counter at his back and a death grip on Adam’s shirt the only thing holding him upright. Adam looks dazzled. Tony feels wrecked.

“I--”

“Yeah.”

“Adam.”

“Shh. Shh -- it’s okay.”

Reece says “not that I’m not pleased you aren’t going to be fucked over by Michelin and you’ve managed to sort out almost fifteen years of issues -- but you need to leave.”

Tony apologizes, mortified. They go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fuck canon! I fixed it!  
> But we're not done yet!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't rush to post your chapters, folks. Then you end up with shitty endings and you'll rewrite the whole thing anyway.

They make it half a block before the thoughts -- disjointed, demanding -- press against Adam’s lips, starting to form statements. Questions.

“Tony…”

“Adam, please.” He swallows hard, cuts a glance toward Adam and quickly away again. Embarrassed. Exhausted. “I can’t do this. Not right now.”

“Okay.” And Adam wants nothing more than to gather him up -- to tuck Tony into his arms and offer him apologies, affection, safety -- but they are in the middle of London's morning street traffic. But Tony looks like he has been pushed too close to the edge too many times in the past few hours, and for once Adam is not about to press him further.

They do not speak. But Adam lets his fingers brush the back of Tony's hand as they walk -- a silent, casual reassurance. Unthinking, desperate, Tony catches at the ghost of his hand, hooks his slim fingers into Adam's. A lifeline.

Adam feels warmer than he ever has; secure and content -- but the words still buzz at the back of his mind, an itch that needs scratching. Unresolved. Unhealed.

When they reach the Tube station and Tony grinds to a slow, unwilling stop on the sidewalk, he cannot leave it hanging between them. Can't let Tony walk away just yet.

He catches Tony's warm hand in both his own, their fingers tangled together. And he can see it in the way Tony starts to frown, the worry that clears his dark eyes, that Adam is too frantic -- too urgent. He smooths his thumb over the ridges of Tony's knuckles.

“I owe you an apology, Tony. A proper one.”

_ “Adam.” _

“No, listen to me.” Tony is not allowed to absolve him this time -- needs to hear this. Adam needs to  _ say _ this. “I’ve got to stop running from all the damage I cause. Last night? I could have cost us everything because of my fuck ups. And that -- I couldn’t live with myself, Tony.” This is it. The ghosts and demons will be laid to rest. The past cannot haunt him anymore, not when there is so much potential for the future. He has had too many revelations, understands too much now, to keep living his life on a tightrope walk of almost-wreckage and adrenaline. “I swear to you, things are going to be better.” 

Tony ducks his head, hiding the hint of a smile that struggles against his pressed-tight lips. It's all so much. It all hurts so much -- he is so tired. But he has always had an endless reservoir of love, of faith, for Adam. Even when he had imagined there was nothing left of the man for him to believe in. Tony breathes deeply, nodding. “Somehow,” he says “somehow, I believe you.”

He has always believed in Adam, even when Adam had no right to claim anyone's faith or love or respect. A lying, useless junkie.

Things will be better now.

_ Adam _ will be better now.

“This time, I mean it.”

In the soft morning light, Tony seems frighteningly small, made of something delicate and eminently breakable. Watching Adam with those wide, beautiful eyes. Adam has no illusions about Tony Balerdi -- knows just how strong he is, how stubborn and how  _ fierce _ he is.

He would kiss him again. But they are both exhausted; there have been too many tears and too much panic and Tony has somehow worked a miracle for them all. For all Tony's fierceness, he looks far too fragile -- a kiss now, in broad daylight on the London streets, might just be the thing that shatters him.

Adam squeezes his hand. “Go home, Tony,” he says softly. “Get some rest.”

Tony nods -- purses his lips and seems ready to say something -- and then settles for “yes. Yes, okay.” And then “I'll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah.” Adam feels his whole being soften, suffused with fondness. “Of course.”

He watches Tony disappear. Catches the hesitation -- the brief backward glance. 

How could he not have known? How did he not realize? Fierce, fussy, Little Tony with all his anxieties and his headstrong refusal to let go.

Mirror Images.

Adam loves him.

The thought sketches a smile across his face, buoys him as he shoves his hands into his pockets and sets off in the direction of the Langham. There is work to be done.

They are already assembled when he arrives -- Max and Helene and David and Kaitlin, lingering in the early morning calm, the silence heavy and uncertain between them.

For a moment, when all their eyes pin Adam in the doorway, heavy with questions, he wants to turn and run. Nausea creeps into his throat. 

_ You’ve really fucked up this time, Adam Jones. Really think you can recover from this? _

He screws his courage to the sticking place. There is no more running. His demons can't chase him anymore.

“Look,” he tells the kitchen staff when he has gathered them all before the pass. “Last night was a fucking disaster. That was my fault.” And he knows the judgement that sits heavy on his shoulders is his own, that none of them are looking at him with so much wariness, so much disappointment. But still, he feels it. And still it stings. He lets it sharpen him, make his resolve stronger. “But we’ve got another chance at this -- somehow -- and I promise all of you, this time it’ll be different.”

“Yes, chef.”

The pronouncement rings in the air, reverberates in his bones. His team. His family. They are together in this. And he sees the way Helene glows, watching him with bright, steady eyes. It is the way Jean Luc had looked at him, almost the way Tony looks at him -- full of pride. As though Adam Jones is worth something. As though he means something.

He ties the apron strings around his waist.

“We do what we do, right?” There is no question. They make damn good food. They do their jobs. “And we do it together.”

* * *

The Langham weathers the blow of Michel’s betrayal -- the almost Michelin catastrophe, and a day later the world turns smoothly again on its axis. Or so it seems.

Adam orchestrates everything -- oversees the deliveries, making certain every olive, spinach leaf, and cut of meat is perfect. Talks the chefs through the menu plans and tosses out tasks for prep. And Tony is wrapped up in conversations with Kaitlin and the hotel concierge, in going over table arrangements with the waitstaff. He spares a shy smile for Adam, a nervous flush that spreads across the back of his neck, coloring the tips of his ears, and disappears into the office for a half an hour with an inch-thick stack of papers and his nose in his coffee cup. 

Barely more than “good morning” passes between them.

_ It didn’t mean anything, _ Tony thinks in the quiet of the office, hyper-aware of the cadence of Adam’s voice outside the door, the clatter and chaos of the kitchen stirring to life. _ It couldn’t have meant anything -- not for him. _

It wasn’t possible.

Guests start to appear. Orders arrive in the kitchen on squares of paper and leave, perfectly plated. Adam sinks into the dance of it, commands the kitchen.

“Service.”

Tony is there to take the plates but his usual grace -- that flourish, so uniquely  _ Tony _ \-- is absent. He flinches at the crashing of pots and pans. Says little and blushes fiercely and hardly manages to look Adam in the eye across the pass.

In the spare corner of his brain not devoted to marshaling the kitchen staff, supervising the plating of each order that crosses the pass, keeping track of dishes and ingredients and which order is what and who ought to take it out -- Adam worries.

“Adam?” Tony fidgets. Scratches at the tip of his nose as he passes the order slip over. There is something terribly unsettled about him, something self-conscious and embarrassed that makes him shrink when their hands brush. “Order for table six.”

“Thanks.” 

Adam has never seen Tony so discomposed. So awkward.

What is this?

Even in Jean Luc’s kitchen, when Tony had been sixteen and seventeen and eighteen, just a  _ boy _ \-- anxious and sweet with his baby face and his Bambi eyes and all-too-obvious with his crush on Adam Jones, the rising star, he had never seemed so nervous. So uncomfortable and uneasy around Adam.

He has no idea what any of it means.

“Behind you with a knife, chef.” Helene, appearing at his shoulder with her keen eyes -- smarter than the lot of them. She watches Tony’s slim frame slip through the kitchen’s double doors, stiff and perfectly poised. Glances up at Adam who is all furrowed brow and blue-eyed confusion, and sighs. “I like Tony, he’s sweet. If you broke him, you’ll have the entirety of the waitstaff and most of this kitchen out for blood. So what have you done now?”

And Adam, focused on the space that Tony has vacated says “I didn’t do  _ anything,  _ Helene. I kissed him.” Which. Certainly isn’t nothing. But shouldn’t result in Tony acting like this. And then -- “wait…  _ most _ of the kitchen?! You people have no loyalty.”

Helene shrugs and plates the asparagus.

Adam accepts the plate from her, draws out three neat flicks of sauce with the end of the spoon. She can see his brain working itself into knots.

“You kissed him,” Helene murmurs. And that’s a fucking revelation -- but she should have expected. Once Adam Jones is in, he is  _ all in.  _ “What else?”

“What do you mean ‘what else’?” Adam screws up his face at her, scowling. “You want a play-by-play?” But he trails her back toward the  _ poisson, _ all hunched shoulders and hangdog expression. “We said some things and I kissed him and promised him things were gonna be better now.”

“That’s it?” It’s a struggle to keep her voice level, and Helene might tear her hair because of this man. Seriously considers whacking him with the serving spoon. “I know you’re very impressed with yourself Adam, but even you with all your fucking charm don’t just get to kiss a man and suddenly the world is all better. For Christ’s sake -- did you  _ explain  _ yourself? Does he know  _ why  _ you were kissing him?”

“Uh.”

Helene is going to  _ kill this man. _ She wants to cast a ‘for fuck’s sake can you believe this guy?’ look at Max, maybe a ‘please grant me strength’ but it doesn’t bear dragging another chef into the soap opera bullshit. Apparently, the joys of Adam Jones and his ineptitude are all hers for the solving. 

“You didn’t see him, when he thought something might have happened to you.” And she lowers her voice then, lets him see just how deadly serious she is when she remembers Tony, wet-eyed and muffling his sobs, lit by the single desk lamp as he’d tried to haul them all back from the brink. “Adam, he was  _ wrecked. _ And you want to tell me that he’s been in love with you for god knows how long, thinking that it’s completely unrequited so he’ll never have a chance, and because you  _ kissed  _ him everything’s fine now?” She does smack him then. One good blow with the flat of the serving spoon across his knuckles. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

_ “Ow.” _

But Adam thinks  _ fuck  _ and  _ Christ  _ and  _ how could I have been so stupid?! _

There is no way to fix it. Not in the middle of service. He has work to do and Tony is busy playing the gracious, perfect host in the front of house, and so Adam is left with the panic crawling through his veins and a thousand self-recriminations like Hail Marys running through his brain.

They make it through the dinner service without incident -- a miracle with Adam tying himself into so many knots. David oversees the orchestration of the family meal. The waitstaff slip in and out of the kitchen with dirty dishes, clearing away the day’s refuse. Tony is not among them -- lingering in the front of house.

“I’m gonna grab some air,” Adam mutters, blowing past Helene. Already halfway out the kitchen door. He just needs a minute to think, to clear his head.

_ You didn’t see him, when he thought something might have happened to you. Adam, he was  _ wrecked.

He still has missed calls on his phone. Voicemails.

Two from Helene.

The rest -- Tony.  _ “Adam, pick up.”  _ The recording jangles with the urgency in Tony’s voice as Adam paces the asphalt.  _ “Christ, Adam, please don’t do this.” _

He’d been out of his goddamn mind. Half-crazy with grief, with shame -- thinking he’d gone and destroyed everything they’d managed to build. After he’d thought it had all been laid to rest; the old Adam, the drug-up, drunken, fucked-up addict dealing one last blow from beyond the grave.

_ “Adam?”  _ Tony’s voice in his ear. Small. Lost. Sounding younger and more frightened than Adam has ever heard him.

And how many times has he heard the notes of panic creeping into Tony’s voice? The anguish and sadness and the fear? How many times in Paris had Tony been there to rescue Adam from himself -- to drag him off one death spiral after another?

How many times had Tony wondered if this was the one that would kill Adam truly and properly? If this was the crash-and-burn he wouldn’t be coming back from?

_ “Look, we can still fix this. I will fix this -- but, I swear to you Adam, I will kill you myself if you do something stupid.”  _ It may be the recording, but Adam catches the way Tony’s voice quavers. Desperate. Frantic. And nowhere near ready to give up on hope. “ _ Adam, just let me know you’re alive. Please.” _

Tony had shown up in Reece’s kitchen hollowed out and fraying at the edges, with the bruise on his face stark and purple, his face splotchy and raw-looking. How ugly had the night been for him? Not knowing if Adam -- stupid, fucking Adam -- was alive or dead or up to his eyeballs in coke and booze again. Not knowing if their restaurant -- his entire world -- would last the week.

_ “I don’t… I don’t know what to do. Adam. Pick up the phone, for God’s sake -- please don’t…” _ The hitch in his breath, the sound of tears, is unmistakable.  

Adam almost can’t bear to keep listening. He sinks onto the low concrete stoop, half-numb and sick with grief.

_ “I don’t care. I don’t care what happened. Michelin doesn’t matter. The restaurant doesn’t matter. Just… come back. I can’t -- I don’t want to lose you again.” _ Adam tastes salt, swipes at the few tear trails that have slipped unnoticed down his cheeks.  _ “I know it doesn’t matter what I say to you, Adam, but please. Please. I love you. I --”  _

He doesn’t hear the rest, is already pocketing the phone, stumbling to his feet.

_ Oh Christ. Oh Tony.  _

The kitchen is deserted -- the door swinging shut. Family meal is over and done. And Tony -- were is Tony? He can’t have left yet.

_ I love you. I love you. I... _

The office door is still open. The lights are on. In a daze, Adam finds himself floating across the kitchen space -- lingering in the doorway. For a moment, Tony doesn’t notice him, wrapped up in emails and paperwork and endless booking arrangements, awash in the warm golden lamplight. The bruises have been covered by tricks with foundation and powder, the stress and exhaustion eased from around the corners of his eyes.

“Tony,” Adam breathes, leaning against the door frame. “Hey.”

“Adam.” Tony gives a whole-bodied twitch like he might just leap out of his skin, blinking wide-eyed and startled. “Is everything all right?”

“I don’t know.” Adam steps into the office -- taking a liberty -- and he hasn’t felt himself on such uncertain footing in a long time. Not since he stood before Jean Luc and lied his way into the greatest kitchen in Paris. And there is more at stake now than there was even then. He shifts his weight, lets his eyes wander around the interior of an office he’s seen a million times before -- struggling. There are no right words. No way to present this that doesn’t feel inadequate, pathetic. “Look, you know I don’t know how to do this.”

“Adam?” Tony is frozen, forehead scrunched with that nervous half-frown of his.

“I don't know what love's supposed to look like, Tony.” The words fall out of Adam in a rush as he steps in close and spreads his hands. Laughing and helpless against the surge of affection that dances crystal-clear and brilliant in his electric blue eyes. Tony quavers. “But I know I like seeing you smile. I like making you taste-test just to watch your eyes light up. I like how much you fuss over everything and how you mother-hen all your staff and I like your stupid suits and your pocket squares and your fancy goddamn hair. And I don't know what I'd do without you.”

And he is close enough to feel Tony shaking, both the maitre d’s hands braced on the edge of the desk to catch himself. Tony’s chest heaves -- the breath catching at the back of his throat -- and he looks stunned and terrified and like he might just break down and cry. The “please” that stammers its way from his lips is so soft, so fragile…

_ Please don’t do this to me. _

He can’t stand this.

Adam delivers the death blow; cants his head to try and catch Tony’s eye, and asks “you think that might mean I love you?” 

Tony makes a low, wounded noise. And there is nothing for it -- the tears begin to fall in earnest. “But…” He hiccups, sobbing. “I don’t understand. Adam, you can’t…”

_ It isn’t possible. It was a fluke. An act of emotion and desperation and relief and it hadn’t  _ meant  _ anything… _

“I can.” Adam speaks so softly, reaching for Tony. The big, warm hands find their way to the nape of his neck, to the cradle of his jaw -- gentle and stroking, smoothing away the rush of tears. And Adam is so close. Looks at him with so much tenderness in his steady eyes. “I can and I do. I love you, Tony.”

“Don’t.” A last ditch effort, because if Tony gives his heart now -- if he is wrong about this -- he will shatter. There will be no picking up the pieces and moving on this time. He won’t be able to bear it. “Don’t do this -- it isn’t possible. You’re teasing…” He might be sick, feels like someone has poured ice water into his veins. “You’re…”

“In my restaurant not everything is possible after all” Adam admits softly, and there is not even a breath of space left between them. Nowhere left for either of them to escape, no room for facades, for old mistakes, guilt, shame. “But this? This is.”

Adam has kissed him twice now. And now this -- _ I don’t know what I’d do without you? _

_ You think that might mean I love you? _

And he looks at Tony with so much warmth...

What is one more risk where Adam Jones is concerned?

Tony pitches up onto his toes, presses their lips together -- tremulous and uncertain. A quick kiss, all stubble-rasp and warm mouths and the flutter of his heart trying to escape the confines of his ribs. 

It is over too quickly and -- for a moment -- Tony still fears that is all there will ever be, in spite of everything. Their eyes catch. And then Adam devours him. He kisses deep and hungry and desperate and Tony opens up, blooms against him.

_ I love you. _

Tony’s deft fingers find purchase in Adam’s jacket -- a hand-hold -- and Adam’s hands are in his hair, ruffling the thick softness of it as he draws him backward, waltzes him through the office. Adam nips at the quirk of a bottom lip and there are slim fingers tracing the planes of his shoulders. His own square, scarred hands slip lower, rucking up Tony’s perfectly starched dress shirt to find the sweet dimples at the base of his spine as they tumble out into the empty kitchen. When his hands slide lower, Tony shivers delightfully against him. Makes the most perfect, shocked  _ “oh”  _ sound when Adam scoops him up and sets him on the counter -- presses up between Tony’s spread thighs for better access. And Adam noses into his sweet-smelling hair, grinds slow against him as Tony lets his head fall back, sinking teeth into his trembling lower lip to stifle a whimper.

“Fuck,” Adam groans, mouthing a line of kisses along the tender column of his throat. “Fuck, Tony, you’re just -- I want to take you apart.” The light in Tony’s eyes is infectious, shy and glowing, and Adam soars when he kisses him again, tastes the hitch in Tony’s breath. 

“Adam,” Tony moans. “Adam -- we are in the  _ kitchen. _ ”

He slips a hand between them, palming Tony through his trousers to make him squirm. “I don’t care.” Adam punctuates each sentence with a kiss, mumbling curses and promises against Tony's eager mouth. “I don't care, Tony, I'd fuck you right here on the counter.”

_ Oh _ . Oh, that's a thought. Wonderful and terrible -- like a hundred thousand volts of electricity straight to Tony's core. “ _ Ada _ \-- Adam.” He swallows hard. His voice quavers with sobs. Adam is on him and around him with his low voice rumbling in Tony's ear and it is what he wanted, everything he never dared to imagine or hope for -- and he  _ can't _ . He can't. It’s too much.  _ I love him. I love him and he loves me. He really loves me and he means it _ . And the magnitude of it leaves him reeling.

“God,” Adam groans. Tony's tie is gone, the top buttons undone, and he noses his way into the heat beneath the fabric, tastes the soft slip of exposed skin -- hungry and desperate and lost to the pleasure of it. The thought of Tony, who has wanted for so long, of being the one to give him  _ exactly _ what he has waited for.  “I could lay you out right here -- strip you and spread you out on the pass, bend you over the counter and take you apart nice and slow until you were sobbing for it.” 

It’s too much. Too many touches and sensations and there are too many wild thoughts flying through Tony’s head, half-grasped and confused. He can’t think -- but he  _ wants  _ \-- and he needs to breathe, and he pushes lightly against Adam’s chest. “Don’t, please.” And he hates to stop, hates to push Adam away -- but he needs a moment. Just a moment to breathe. “Adam, I’m sorry, but I…”

The loss of the warm weight, the drag of stubble and heated kisses along his jaw could kill him. “For Christ’s sake, don’t apologize --  _ I’m _ sorry.” And Tony sees the panic starting to set in behind Adam’s crystalline eyes, the guilt and shame that come creeping back as his hands hover uselessly, suddenly unsure whether it is safe to touch. “I’m sorry -- shit -- Tony, it’s too much isn’t it?” He slumps, head hanging low. “Jesus, I’m already screwing everything up, aren’t I?”

_ Oh, Adam,  _ Tony thinks.  _ Oh darling. _ That isn’t it at all. 

“No, no, you aren’t,” he insists. “You aren’t, Adam. It’s okay.” He reaches out -- the wild fluttering of his heart behind his ribs a little less frantic now -- and catches Adam’s rough face between his hands, smooths the pads of his thumbs across the planes of his cheekbones. And he says “it’s okay Adam, please; take me upstairs?”

“But…” They are so close, almost nose-to-nose, and Tony can practically feel the way his eyebrows scrunch together. Confused. Uneasy. Adam searches his face and Tony lets him see everything -- every naked, honest emotion that bursts and swells within him. “Are you sure? If you’re not…”

Tony kisses his cheek. “We just… go slow, okay?” His hair is ruffled wildly, falling in a soft comma across his brow. Adam is sure he has never looked more perfect.  “Good things take time.” 

And Adam thinks of how many years it has been since they first stumbled across one another in Jean Luc’s kitchen in the rosy, early days in Paris when they were both such young and different people. Thinks about how long Tony has loved him and how long it had taken him to see just how much he loved Tony in return. How much has changed between them. And he can’t help but laugh; a soft, fond sound muffled in Tony’s warm collarbone as he chuckles and curses “fuck. You’re damn right they do.”

Tony’s eyes shine -- a little bit of mirth, a little bit of the still-lingering pain -- when he shrugs. “Eh,” he says “we get there eventually.”


	10. Chapter 10

The call comes late one morning when the sun has already crowned the London rooftops, spilling warm light into Tony’s quiet, comfortable flat. 

A rare, lazy Sunday -- the both of them free until dinner service in the evening. 

The sheets have slipped low, leaving the sunshine to warm bare skin, and Tony sprawls slack and pliable on Adam’s chest, drifting with the soft stroke of fingers through his hair, the trailing of calloused knuckles up and down the curve of his spine.

If Adam has spent a lifetime chasing perfection, he thinks this might be the closest he will come.

When the nightstand rattles, Tony’s cell phone skittering across the surface with  _ Incoming Call - Hospice _ lit up across the screen, Adam’s stomach sinks. “It’s yours,” he says, passing the phone to Tony who has been bracing for this call for far too long. 

Immediately, Tony bolts upright, the bedsheets pooling around his slim waist as he answers the phone, his voice careful, eyes wide. “This is Tony Balerdi.” He darts a single, anxious glance toward Adam who watches the way the line of his throat works, trying to swallow down the climbing panic.

Adam crawls his way up the mattress to Tony, grim-faced, slips his arms around him and cradles him from behind. Bracing for the impact.

“Yes,” Tony says, his voice carefully controlled.

He has prepared for this -- has known this was coming. And yet Adam feels the fine tremors that start in his core, the way the tinny voice on the other end of the line winds Tony up tighter and tighter. 

“Was he in pain?” Slender fingers creep up to find Adam’s hand over Tony’s fluttering heart, twining their fingers together. There is only the slightest hitch in the words.

Adam buries his nose in the sweet softness at the nape of Tony’s neck; a silent support, an apology. The papers were signed a month ago -- ownership of the hotel, of the Langham, transferred officially from Balerdi Senior to Junior. Tony’s workload has almost doubled; there are countless board meetings and lawyers to schmooze and layers and layers of paperwork and questions and business-nuance to sort out.

Tony spreads the contracts and memos and spreadsheets in a semicircle on the floor in the evenings; sits cross-legged in his pajamas and tackles them one by one, armed with a pen and unerring stubbornness until he falls asleep reading over notes from board meetings and Adam finally carries him to bed. 

He knows that the board members expect him to fail, is well aware of all the things the hotel executives whisper. They think that he is too young and too gay and too kind and too unlike themselves to be a worthwhile heir to the Balerdi empire.

Adam thinks they are all fucking fools.

“Thank you,” Tony says faintly. “Thank you for informing me.”

He hangs up.

“Tony --”

“My father is dead.” Tony stares blankly at the bright screen of his phone, feels strangely divorced from it all -- the white-knuckled hand that starts to tremble, tendons straining along the wrist, cannot be his hand. The voice that makes the trembling, quiet pronouncement cannot be his voice. He has known this is coming, has prepared for it -- steeled himself as best he could. And still… He swallows hard. “I need to call the funeral home.”

Everything is already arranged; contracts signed and the pre-need filled out at the funeral home -- the service, the coffin, the flowers, the priest. The Balerdi empire is nothing if not well-prepared. Efficient.

“I need to call…”

Adam plucks the phone from Tony’s slack fingers. “No.” There are few things Adam Jones knows, but he knows grief well. Wore it like a second skin as a child. “No, you just need to take a minute Tony. The funeral home can wait. The business execs can wait.” And he bundles Tony into his arms without resistance, holds on to him when the sobs shake themselves loose and settles them both back against the headboard. “It’s all right,” he soothes. “I’ve got you, baby. You’re gonna be all right.”

This time, Adam will be the steady one, will promise Tony every bit of his strength.

He hates the idea of letting Tony attend the funeral alone -- protests the moment the question is raised. But the day of the funeral comes and Tony is insistent.

“No.” He irons his mouth into a grim line, tilts his chin to let Adam straighten his tie. “It’s better if I do this alone.”

“ _ Tony _ .” 

The tawny, tired eyes roll -- Tony bats at Adam’s fussing, worried hands. “All of my father’s associates will be there, and you know what they think.” Tony has spent too many hours dwelling on what they think, has lost too much sleep over other people’s opinions and good favor and the crises that is the Langham’s new management. “As much as I would like you with me, they have to see me. That I am capable enough in their eyes to step into my father’s role. And they won’t see that if all they see is the man I love hovering at my elbow.”

Adam hates it, but he has to concede the point. “Okay,” he agrees, kissing Tony between the eyebrows. “Okay. To be fair, I think if I set foot in a church after all the shit I’ve pulled I might self-immolate.”

It doesn’t quite earn him a laugh, but Tony’s sweet hazel eyes soften.

Still, Adam insists, “I’ll wait for you outside.”

The church is old -- a soaring, Gothic structure with all of the grandeur and foreboding that Adam thinks Antonio Balerdi, Sr. deserves. He scuffs his feet in the gravel, pacing up and down the cemetery path beneath his umbrella while Tony sits uncomfortably through the Catholic funeral mass, seated at the head of the church with fifty pairs of eyes boring holes between his slim shoulder blades.

It seems to go on forever.

When the bodies dressed in their funeral best finall begin to spill from the doors, Adam’s heart squeezes itself into his throat, waiting to catch sight of Tony -- a glimpse of the familiar, tender face. 

“Tony? Are you all right?” The moment he finds him -- looking drained and smothered among the crush of condolences and sympathies -- Adam is instantly at his side, bullying his way across the muddy walk to tuck Tony beneath the shelter of the black umbrella. “Was the service okay?”

Tony sighs, a sound heavy with the weight of the world. “It was very austere. Very Catholic.” He swallows around the knot in his throat. “Papa would have been pleased.”

Adam snorts, says “Jesus” and then remembers where they are standing and grimaces. A slightly hysterical, wet-sounding giggle escapes Tony.

He sags, leaning heavily into Adam -- warm and solid and secure -- and lets momentum steer them vaguely in the direction of the Balerdi patriarch’s final resting place. The path takes them past a gathering of company executives, gathered like over-stuffed crows, along the gravel walkway; dark-suited and grey-haired and huddled together in their cabal.

“-- and now the business is in the hands of that fag…” A shake of the head.

Adam stops short -- a sheen of red-and-black passing across his eyes. Tucked into his side, he feels Tony tense.

“Young and stupid,” the tall man tuts. “It won’t last a year.”

There is a retort on Adam’s lips, the anger singing heavy and brilliant in his fists, when Tony stops him with a hand on his chest. And Adam is prepared to go to bat about this -- to argue with Tony that there are some things he just isn’t going to stand for; but Tony squares himself up, sets his jaw with a dangerous gleam in his eyes, and Adam knows at once that justice will be metted out.

“Gentlemen,” Tony detaches himself from Adam’s side -- his voice smooth and cool as glacial ice. “I would like to remind you that this  _ fag _ has seen a steady management and growth of the London Langham’s profits over the past five years, and in the past year alone we have almost doubled our profits after signing on Adam Jones.” A jerk of his chin, the sparks in his eyes never once wavering. “Our reviews have never been so glowing. Our dining room is full every night. The hotel is busier than ever. By any metric, it is a success -- and it has been orchestrated by  _ me _ .”

Delightful, fearsome man that he is.

The funeral-goers shuffle and shift and mutter amongst themselves; embarrassed. Not a one of them dares address Tony directly.

“I don’t see why my sexuality is any business of yours and I certainly do not see how it impedes me from running a successful business.” Only Adam sees the fine tremor that starts in Tony’s shoulders, hears the brittle edge in the sharpness of his parting words. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.” And Tony turns on his heel, stalking off into the cemetery grounds, leaving Adam lingering behind.

He chases after Tony who stuffs his hands into his pockets, hunching his shoulders against the clammy mist. Adam catches him by the elbow and tucks him back beneath the shelter of their dark umbrella when they find themselves standing beside the open cut of earth and burnished coffin.

Tony feels infinitely fragile beside him.

“You’re incredible, Tones,” Adam says softly, shifting his weight to lean shoulder-to-shoulder against Tony. He is more than incredible. He is wonderful; everything good and bright and steady in Adam’s world. And he is brilliant -- in the same way that Adam Jones is a mastermind in a kitchen, Tony is his own quiet brand of genius with schedules and spreadsheets and seating arrangements and service. “Your father would be proud of you.”

For a long, silent moment Tony weighs Adam’s words, peering blankly into the open grave. “No,” he says at last, with only the slightest hint of bitterness. “No -- he would be proud of the Langham, of the restaurant and the success and the achievements. Of you, probably. But of me?” A scoff. “He was never proud of me.”  _ He was embarrassed _ , Tony thinks.

Adam slips an arm around his shoulders, drawing Tony in to press a firm, insistent kiss to his cheek. “ _ I’m _ proud of you,” he proclaims. “You’re our lynchpin, Tony -- nothing works without you; not the hotel, not the restaurant, not me --”

Tony makes a disgruntled sound of protest. “You had  _ better  _ be able to make it work on your own,” he insists, planting a firm finger in Adam’s chest. “I am not here to keep you functioning through your crazy. I can’t do it.” He had tried so many times in Paris, and it had almost wrecked him. He can’t do that again.

“No,” Adam agrees quietly. Too many old fuck ups. Healed over scars that still hurt if prodded just the right way. “No, you’re right, that’s on me.”

Tony stretches up on his toes to kiss the corner of Adam’s mouth, then. Gentle. “We will make it work. The both of us.”

They say little on the walk to the Langham -- but somehow, they both feel lighter.

Slipping through the back entrance into the kitchen, everything settles back into place; they are immediately immersed in the noise of it, the flurry of activity -- Helene calling out orders, the sizzle and hiss of burners and boiling water and things frying in skillets and searing in oiled pans. 

Tony exchanges his funeral jacket for the spare hanging on the office door. Adam shrugs his way into the chef’s smock, calling out “David, how are we looking on the appetizers?”

“Pretty good, chef.”

Adam pulls a face, despairing. “‘ _ Pretty good _ ’?”

David cracks a smile, ducking down to season the finely shaped cuts of lamb. “Perfection, chef.”

“That’s more like it.” Adam scrubs London from his hands, settling into the rhythm of the kitchen -- the movement of orders across the pass, the energy that suffuses their workspace. “Helene --”

The double doors spill Kaitlin -- towing  Misha -- into the kitchen, looking only slightly harried. She drops Misha’s arm, proclaiming “oh thank God” the moment she spots Adam and Tony at the pass. “They’re here -- Michelin. Table nine.”

And this time, it is not a false alarm.

Tony feels the ripples of electricity that pass through the kitchen, the way they have all suddenly gone still -- waiting for instructions, scarcely daring to breathe. There are no second-chances this time. He does not have any more miracles to conjure. He is aware of Helene’s eyes sliding to Adam, meeting his own along the way.

There is not an ounce of fear in Adam’s rugged face, no hesitation, no wariness -- no arrogance either. Just a steady, certain confidence. “We do what we do,” he says, settling himself behind the pass, a captain at the helm of his ship.

“What?” 

So many pitfalls. So many catastrophes. And he is so  _ blasé _ ...

“We do what we do,” Adam repeats himself, and his blue eyes burn -- vivid and white-hot with the intensity of his conviction. This is not a madman, an addict. He is not Icarus. “And we do it together.”

Tony beams. “Yes chef.”

Kaitlin hands over the order slip with her lips pressed tightly together -- casts Tony a nervous, hopeful look -- and Adam sets them in motion. Calls the orders, commands the battle in a perfectly orchestrated flash of knives, a flash of heat, volleying plates back and forth for garnish and sauces and final inspections. All falling together beautifully, unfolding like magic before their eyes.

This is what Adam Jones was meant to be.

“Okay,” Adam says after what feels like an eternity and no time at all. “Clear the pass -- Tony, you’re up.”

He hesitates, just for a moment, before taking the plates. Meets Adam’s electric blue eyes across the countertop. Tony’s heart has lodged itself somewhere high in his throat. This is it. There is no turning back now. “Ready?” 

The corners of Adam’s eyes crinkle, softening. He has never been more ready -- with Tony, with this team, Adam Jones could take on giants. In a single, quick motion he leans across the pass, capturing the back of Tony’s skull to press a kiss firm and swift against his startled mouth. For luck. For love. 

Adam grins. “Service.”


	11. Chapter 11

They wait.

Any minute now, the verdict will be delivered. Adam and Helene have retreated to the waterfront terrace -- Helene to chainsmoke her way through a carton of cigarettes, her slim fingers fidgety with nerves, and Adam to stare out over the water, silent.

“It was as damn near perfect as you could possibly have managed,” Helene speaks as much to Adam as to herself, trying to calm the anxiety like carbonation fizzling beneath her skin. “Everything will be fine.”

Adam should be a wreck. He should be pacing, tearing his hair out -- riddled with anxiety and itching for a hit, a drink, a  _ something  _ to calm his screaming, panicking brain. But he is strangely calm. The devils are silent. As still and blank as the languid surface of the Thames that winds below them.

_ Everything will be fine. _ Helene is right.

After all that he has done, every crash and burn and resurrection -- Paris, Michel’s betrayal, the wrecked, broken-hearted voicemails from Tony, that first kiss that had felt like  _ soaring _ . He has Tony. He has Helene and David and Max and Kaitlin and even fucking Montgomery Reece. A kitchen to cook in, people who give a damn about him.

They will do what they do -- third star or no. They will do it together. He has made them this promise.

Helene spots Tony first.

There is a little knot of anxiety twisted up between his eyebrows, the Michelin book clutched against his chest. Adam’s heart gives a thrilled pang -- Judgment Day.

“Oh, God,” Helene groans. “Don’t keep us in suspense!”

Tony’s poker face is wretched -- his mouth twitches, his cheeks glow. And he cracks; a massive grin like the sunrise. “Congratulations,” he tells Adam, looking like he might well burst with emotion. “You are a three-star chef.”

The words are almost lost in the rush of Adam pushing off the low wall, of his hands around Tony’s waist -- scooping him up and swinging him around in a circle as he whoops and laughs and buries his face in Tony’s hair. Crushes him close with the sudden, overwhelming burst of emotion -- love and relief and shock slipping out in giggles and tears as they cling to one another.

“You’ve done it,” Tony whispers into the breath of space between them. “You’ve done it, Adam -- I knew you would.”

“ _ We _ did it. Together. All of us.”

And it is so much more than Adam could ever have deserved. And he catches Tony’s soft face between his hands, presses a kiss to his forehead. To his fluttering eyelids. To each cheek and the blunted tip of his nose and the sweetness of his trembling lips. A  _ thank you _ , an _ I love you _ , and a hundred silent promises.

They have only just begun.


End file.
